Exiles

Exiles by Jane Harper, the third book in her Aaron Falk mystery series, was published in 2022. The Falk novels draw upon Harper’s experiences living in Australia. The first, The Dry, was made into a film in 2020. The film of the second, Force of Nature, is in production and scheduled to be released in 2024. Exiles was a New York Times Bestseller and won the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction. It was also shortlisted for the Abia General Fiction Book of the Year and the Danger Award.

Exiles centers on Falk’s investigation of Kim Gillespie’s disappearance at a food and wine festival in the wine region of South Australia. Harper’s novel explores the themes of Home and Exile, Perception and Reality, and Memory’s Impact on the Present.

This guide cites the hardcover US Edition published by Flatiron Books.

Content Warning: The source material contains sexual assault, domestic abuse, alcohol misuse, and murder.

Plot Summary

Exiles follows detective Aaron Falk’s unofficial investigation of Kim Gillespie’s disappearance in the fictional town of Marralee in the wine country of Southern Australia. A year before the main action of the novel, Kim disappeared at Marralee’s food and wine festival. Her infant daughter Zoe was found in a stroller at the festival and Kim’s shoe was discovered at a nearby reservoir, but she was never seen again, and her body was never found.

Most people believe Kim killed herself. However, Kim has an older daughter, Zara, from a previous relationship, who insists that Kim did not die by suicide. Falk is visiting Marralee from his home in Melbourne for the christening of the son of his friend Greg Raco, and he agrees to take the cold case. Zara introduces Falk to Joel, the stepson of a woman named Gemma, whom Falk becomes interested in. Falk learns that Joel’s father, Dean, was killed in an unsolved hit-and-run, and Falk takes this on as a second case.

Falk was at the festival the previous year when Kim disappeared. He and several other witnesses saw her, but none talked to her. As Falk and Raco dig for clues, they learn that her husband Rohan’s alibi is not completely solid. They also learn from Kim’s friend Naomi that Kim was assaulted near the reservoir decades before and never went near it as an adult. Furthermore, Joel was working the festival gate near the reservoir that night and never saw Kim. After several dead ends, Falk realizes that he did not see Kim at the festival after all, and neither did anyone else because she wasn’t there. People expected her to be there, and that expectation caused them to “remember” something that never happened.

The next section of the novel is a flashback from Kim’s perspective. After breaking up with Zara’s father, Charlie, in Marralee, she moved to Adelaide. She began dating Rohan, but after they are married, he began to isolate her from her friends at home. After Zoe was born, Rohan claimed she was Charlie’s baby and threatened the child’s life. During a fight, he mentioned her assault years before that she had not revealed. Kim realized that Rohan was the perpetrator.

Back in the present, Falk realizes that Rohan killed Kim before arriving at the festival. He planted her shoe at the reservoir and abandoned Zoe in the stroller to make it appear Kim drowned. At the end of the novel, Falk grasps that the car paint at the accident scene where Joel’s father was killed is the same color as the walls of the police station. Marralee’s police sergeant covered up the original paint because it was his daughter, driving while drunk, who killed Joel’s father. With the cases solved, Falk leaves for Melbourne. He is unhappy there, however, and he returns to Marralee to work at Charlie’s vineyard and pursue a relationship with Gemma.