Tyce is excellent on the amorphous horrors of alcoholism and mornings after, on the slow chipping away of self-belief in an abusive relationship, and, as a former criminal barrister herself, on the details of the criminal justice system. Alison’s personal life, meanwhile, is spiralling out of control: she’s drinking far too much, she can’t tear herself away from a dangerous affair with a colleague – she’s “a craven Anastasia to his cut-price Christian Grey” – and her family life with her husband and young daughter seems to be slipping away. Madeleine has admitted to stabbing her husband multiple times, but Alison is sure there’s something more to the case. Harriet Tyce’s first novel, Blood Orange (Wildfire, £12.99), follows criminal barrister Alison as she defends her first murder case. The landscape of The Lost Man is even more hostile, even more alien and beautiful, as Harper deftly manipulates her small but fully realised cast to a conclusion that chills, despite the outback heat. Her follow-up, Force of Nature, moved the setting to the bushland, where a woman goes missing on a corporate retreat. Harper’s debut, The Dry, centred on the horrific murder of a family in a hot, remote Australian town. But as his eldest brother, Nathan – a man reviled by the far-flung community, and who lives a life of horrifying loneliness – digs into the mystery, the discrepancies pile up, and he can’t stop asking questions. His car is found abandoned and locals begin to ask if Cameron walked to his death he wouldn’t be the first. The dead man, Cameron, is one of three brothers who farm on vast cattle properties in the red desert driveways run to more than 20 kilometres here neighbours are hours away. A dust circle surrounds the grave’s headstone, made by the desperate man as he tried to stay within its small shadow, but who lasted less than 24 hours in the fierce heat of an outback “blasted smooth by a 100-year assault from sand, wind and sun”.

At the grave of a long-dead stockman, hours from anywhere in the middle of the scorching Australian outback, lies a fresh corpse. A ustralian author Jane Harper’s third novel, The Lost Man (Little, Brown, £12.99), opens with an image so disturbing it lingers for days.

The lone man jane harper