Jane Harper’s Last One Out is, on the surface, a mystery thriller about the disappearance of Sam, a much-loved son, and the desperate quest of his grieving parents, Jo and Griff, to discover what happened to him.
But the novel reaches far beyond the crime at its centre. It is also a story of a town under siege: Carralon, once an enviable small country community, is slowly disintegrating under the encroaching presence of a mine.
Noisy, polluting and round-the-clock, the mine operates relentlessly. Its owners buy out the residents, at first with generous offers, then with progressively less, leaving those who remain to face the collapse of services and the erosion of community life.
Some locals vow to resist, determined to preserve what they can; others take the money and run. Many are torn, caught between loyalty to a community and place and the inevitability of change.
It is against this backdrop that Sam vanishes without trace on the afternoon of his 21st birthday. Even five years later, no one knows what became of him. Harper intertwines Jo and Griff’s search for closure with the struggles, loyalties and conflicts of the townspeople, drawing the reader deeply into both the mystery and the human drama.
When the truth finally emerges, one might expect the clues to have been sufficient for the reader to piece it together and to figure out the motives. Arguably, this is not entirely the case in Last One Out. Still, others may disagree – and, as I freely admit, I am no Miss Marple.
Jane Harper: shining
Where Harper shines most is in her portrayal of Carralon’s people. There is Sylvie, dressed in her customary black, still opening the local pub from time to time. There is Heather, mother of two teenage boys, struggling to balance their needs with her father’s care.
Those teenage boys, Zach and Kyle, are restless and bored in a town drained of youthful life. And there is Jo, once the local doctor before the clinic closed, who shoulders her grief with quiet strength. Even those who leave, like Sam’s godparents, are vividly drawn – becoming known through their terse, grief-laden conversations and the bank statements spread across the kitchen table.
And always, there is the mine. Its rumble never ceases, an unseen adversary that seeps into the bones of the story. Harper captures its looming presence so well that it forces the reader to reflect on the wider costs of exploitation: not just the horrifying dispossession of Australia’s First Peoples, but of their descendants – the heirs of the dispossessors – who find themselves on the wrong end of history.
Should you read this book? Absolutely.
Harper remains a brilliant writer: her prose is fluent, her characters richly drawn, her setting alive. A minor quibble about the handling of clues and a less than fully convincing motivation for the crime should not deter readers from immersing themselves in this compelling novel.
As a portrait of a small town in decline and a community in distress, Last One Out is both moving and memorable.
Last One Out by Jane Harper is published by Pan Macmillan on 14 October 2025.
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