'My debut novel was an unexpected hit - now my books are picked up by Netflix'

Last One Out is a standalone Australian mystery centring around a woman who returns to the town where she used to live as she does every year on the anniversary of the date her son went missing, the day before his 21st birthday.

“The town used to be used to be beautiful and a sense of community but now has become a shadow of itself. People have left, jobs have disappeared and its a sad reflection of what it used to be,” says Harper.

“It’s about loss, breakdown of community, family but also a bit of hope. I think it’s important to have light and shade.”

Australia features heavily in all of Harper’s books.

“The Australian landscape is such a gift for authors, it’s so inspiring. It provides a really interesting backdrop but also helps inform the characters and situations they are in.

"That feeling of menace is really easy to find. But there is also so much beauty. The beauty and brutality are intertwined,” she says.

Harper says the book was really inspired by the loss of so many of Australia’s small communities.

“That isn’t just happening in Australia and while my locations are very specific I believe they have universal themes that a lot of people can recognise even if they haven’t been anywhere like the places in the book.”

Harper was born in Manchester but her family moved to Australia when she was eight.

As a teen, she returned to the UK with her family and lived in Hampshire before attending the University of Kent, where she studied English and history.

After completing her degree, Harper gained an entry-level journalism qualification.

Her first job was as a trainee at the Darlington & Stockton Times in Northallerton, and she later became a senior news journalist at the Hull Daily Mail.

“I had a great time as a journalist and I think it gave me a real love of listening to people’s stories, but really deep down I wanted to be a novelist,” says Harper.

“I wasn’t really sure about how to go about it.”

In 2008, she returned to Australia to take up a reporting job at the Geelong Advertiser. In 2011, she joined the staff of the Herald Sun in Melbourne.

And after working as a print journalist for 13 years, her first novel, The Dry, was published in 2016.

“I knew that if I didn’t give it a try I would regret it and so I sat down and started writing The Dry with no expectations other than I’d like to finish it to get it out of my system.

“I wanted to write a full-length crime fiction novel set in Australia. I set out to write the book I wanted to write and do my best with it,” says Harper.

“Having been a print journalist for 13 years I knew how to sit down and write thousands of words at my computer.”

She started writing The Dry in October 2014 and in April 2015 there was an annual competition in the state of Victoria where she lived for unpublished authors.

“I really didn’t expect anything to come of it but I thought I’d get some constructive feedback if nothing else.”

But she ended up winning the competition. From there it snowballed with agents and publishers queuing up to sign her.

And unlike many novelists who have a drawer full of short stories waiting to find a publisher, Harper’s first foray into writing a work of fiction turned out to be a best seller and she hasn’t looked back.

The Dry has won numerous international awards and has sold more than one million copies worldwide. In 2020 it was made into a feature film starring Eric Bana.

Bana also appeared in the film of Harper’s second book featuring federal agent Aaron Falk, Force of Nature.

Since then she has written another three best sellers including The Survivors which became a TV series of the same name made by Netflix last year.

And she is happy to be hands off when it comes to her books hitting the big or small screen.

"My interest lies in the books, after that I am more than happy to pass them over to the professionals to do what they do.”

Will she write another Aaron Falk book?

“I don’t think so. I wrote The Exiles – the final Aaron Falk book – with that very much being the end. There’s nothing worse as a viewer and a reader when you can tell the character has run out of steam.

“It’s important to recognise that not all characters have 20 books in them. He’s been with me since page one, chapter one and he changed my life and so I wanted to give him the ending he deserved.

“I also do love writing standalone books where you can come at it completely fresh and let it be what you want it to be.”

Unlike some writers who let their characters dictate what is going to happen, Harper always knows the end and ‘whodunnit’ before she starts writing.

“When I am planning a book it is the ending that I start with,” she says. “I probably spend more time planning a book than writing it.”

​Jane Harper is a special guest headliner at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, July 23-26. Her latest novel Last One Out is published by Macmillan (available in hardback at £20, audio and eBook).