9780349727202 Rebecca Makkai: I have some questions for you, Little Brown UK, Hardback

Right off the bat, Rebecca Makkai's  novel " The Great Believers" is an absolutely fabulous piece of literature, I loved it. Her latest " I have some questions for you" however did not have the same effect on me,  really struggled with it until the middle of the novel when the crime element gained dominance.  Did I expect too much from this novel? Maybe.  Mixing a campus with a crime novel has been done before, see Donna Tartt' s Secret History, but I felt Makkai's story and its character building too long drawn out with the added #Metoo movement mixed into it.

Bodie Kane, a film professor and podcaster, the narrator whose voice switches from the past to the present, has been invited to teach a course at  her old boarding school Granby. During one of her seminars a  female student decides to reinvestigate the murder of Bodie's classmate Thalia Keith, who was found brutally killed at Granby over 20 years ago confronting  Bodie with her miserable time back then becoming convinced that the wrong man was accused of the crime still serving time in prison.  It is when she decides to follow her own suspicions blending her present life with the past that the novel becomes really captivating and alive for me. 

 Jane Harper: Exiles, 9781529098440, Macmillan, hardback, ebook available, paperback September 2023

Jane Harper is an Australian crime writer whose new books I always look forward to.

 "Exiles" features Aaron Falk again, an investigator for the Melbourne financial police, this time on leave  visiting his best friend Raco in the Australian wine county for the christening of his godson. It also happens to be the one year anniversary of the disappearence of their friend Kim who uncharacteristically left her young baby unattended at a festival, never to be seen again.  While Aaron is having a fun time with the tight knit group of friends around Raco, both are drawn again to Kim's unresolved disappearence  involuntarily beginning their own investigation. 

Jane Harper has a subtle way of building her plots but I thought "Exiles" was too long drawn out before the novel starts to gather momentum and is not as strong as her previous Falk books. Still, the plot is solid, had a fine time being transported into the Australian wine country, particulary with Falk enjoying a personal stroke of luck this time.