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1-Page Summary of The Dry

Overall Summary

20 years ago, Falk left his hometown of Kiewarra to move to Melbourne. His friend Luke’s father, Gerry Hadler, has invited him back for the funeral of Luke and Karen Hadler. The town believes that they died because of a two-year drought and not because Luke killed them. Ellie Deacon was one of their childhood friends who was murdered 20 years ago when she was 16. She is suspected by many in the town as being responsible for her murder but others believe that it wasn’t her who committed the crime.

The new chief of police in Kiewarra is not convinced that Luke killed Karen and Billy, so he recruits Falk to help him with an unofficial investigation. The two men interview Jamie Sullivan, who was the last person to see Luke alive. The information Jamie provides is not helpful, nor are they able to find anything incriminating on security camera footage from Scott Whitlam’s school where Karen helped out with accounts.

Falk thinks that Mal and Grant may have been involved with the Hadlers’ deaths, but they deny any involvement. Falk then finds a note Karen wrote about Grant, which leads him to interrogate him again. However, he is also questioned by Raco because of his relationship with Dr Leigh, who was having an affair with Jamie at the time. When police investigate their alibis for the day when the murders happened, it turns out that both men were not where they said they were during that time period.

As distrust and accusations are getting worse in Kiewarra, Falk discovers that Whitlam has a gambling addiction. He quickly learns that Whitlam stole school money to pay off his debts and figures out that Karen must have found out while doing the bookkeeping. He suspects that Whitlam murdered Karen and her family to keep his theft a secret, staging it to look like a murder-suicide. The officers go to the school to arrest Whitlam, but he escapes into the woods behind their property. Desperate with no way out, Whitlam comes close to starting a wildfire which would have surely destroyed Kiewarra if it had gotten started; however, he is apprehended before any damage can be done. At the end of his stay in Kiewarra, Falk returns to Ellie’s old backpack where he finds her diary entries from when she was planning on running away from home because of an abusive father figure who was always angry at her for not being perfect like everyone else around him; this leads Falk down another path—he deduces that Deacon killed Ellie when he found out about her plan because Deacon didn’t want anyone taking attention away from him or finding flaws in what seemed like perfection (Deacon).

Prologue

The book opens with a scene in rural Kiewarra, Australia. The town is suffering from a drought and three people have died: one in the woods, two at home. There’s also an abandoned baby who starts to cry when the flies come near.

Chapter 1

A federal agent, Falk, reluctantly drives from Melbourne to Kiewarra for Luke’s funeral. He had not seen Luke in five years and was surprised when he received a letter two days prior to the funeral requesting that he attend.

During the funeral slideshow, there’s a photo of Falk and Luke as teenagers with two girls. The crowd is shaken because one of those girls died a few months after that picture was taken. In addition, people recognize Falk and become upset when they see him. Falk feels uneasy about returning to Kiewarra for the first time in twenty years.

Chapter 2

Gretchen Schoner is at the funeral of her friend, Ellie. She approaches Falk and tells him that she had a son named Lachie with Luke after they drifted apart. Everyone else seems to be in shock because everyone was close to Luke, so no one knows who will be next to die.