Last One Out, by Jane Harper

Ro Crowley makes her fifth annual pilgrimage from Sydney to Carralon Ridge for the anniversary of her son Sam’s birth and also of his disappearance on his 21st birthday. The town is dying of slow strangulation by an expanding coal mine and what remains of the community is still bitterly divided on those who ‘sold out’ and those who stayed to fight. The novel strongly evokes the grief of losing a child and the devastation of not knowing what has happened when someone goes missing. But the plot is unlikely and unconvincing and it takes too long, lingering over the town’s decay before rushing to the result and a somewhat fairytale ending.