Last one out – written by Jane Harper, read by Angeline Armstrong.
“He had been here, that was clear from the marks in the dust. And he had been alone. In a dying town, Ro Crowley waits for her son on the evening of his 21st birthday. But Sam never comes home. His footprints in the dust of three abandoned houses offer the only clue to his final movements. One set in. One set out. Five long years later, Ro returns to Carralon Ridge for the annual memorial of Sam’s disappearance. The skeletal community is now an echo of itself, having fractured under the pressure of the coal mine operating on its outskirts. But Ro still wants answers. Only a few people remain. If the truth is to be found in that town, does it lie among them?”
5 stars! Another amazing, compelling, intriguing, suspenseful mystery by Jane Harper. It’s set in Carralon Ridge, a small, sleepy farming town now dying after being bought out by a big mining concern only interested in profit. Sam Crowley is home from Uni for a family dinner before celebrations with mates for his 21st birthday. Sam’s studies have given him an idea for a local research project – something he’s extremely passionate about as well as very concerned. Sam has hinted at the topic to his parents and sets out to follow up on a lead about three abandoned houses on farms bought out by the mines. Hours pass, Sam’s birthday dinner has gone cold, and Sam is never seen alive again. All that hints at Sam’s last known presence is his dusty footprints leading out of one of the remote abandoned houses he visited that fateful day. The mystery picks up five years later, with his mother reluctantly returning to the now almost abandoned village of Carralon Ridge and their once-happy family home, now a hollow, rented space filled with sadness, anger, loss and anxieties. Sam’s disappearance shattered his family, who crave consolation, explanation, or anything that might bring them closer to learning why Sam never came home for his 21st birthday dinner.