Jane Harper sits in a rare category of contemporary Australian writers whose novels have achieved phenomenal international success. She has sold 1.5 million books in Australia and 3.5 million overseas.
While all popular fiction adheres to certain formulas – that is, after all, why we read these books – Harper has skilfully combined a set of conventional tropes to develop her own narrative brand. Her crime novels build on a familiar ideas about the Australian landscape we have been taught how to interpret and accept – images that have become a type of shorthand.
