Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of bullying, disordered eating, and violence.

“It had taken two more women’s bodies and another reported missing over the next three years before transient laborer Martin Kovac’s name was first mentioned in connection with the murders. By then the damage was well and truly done. A long and lasting shadow had been cast over the Giralang Ranges, and Falk was part of a whole generation that had grown up feeling a shiver when they heard the name.”

To establish the dire mixture of extremely remote settings and inherently disastrous human interactions, Harper creates a setting with a dark and troubled past, one that heightens the narrative tension and creates an atmosphere of suspense and dread. The fictitious Giralang mountains, in addition to being harsh and forbidding terrain, are notorious for being the site of a series of grisly serial murders. Because of this history, the mountains retain a sinister character and cast a shadow over Alice’s disappearance.

“Falk hated it. He hated everything about it. He hated the way men in plush offices could wash their hands at arms’ length and tell themselves it was simply a bit of creative accounting.”

Corporate crimes and The Impact of Corporate Greed on both individuals and companies are a key part of the novel’s thematic structure. Many in the state police do not believe that financial crimes are as serious as violent ones, but Aaron disagrees, and his stance reveals his uncompromising sense of justice, especially when it comes to white-collar crime.

“Lauren, then fat and friendless, could still recall that mingling rush of confusion and relief as Alice took her arm.”

Alice and Lauren have a complex relationship that is much more fraught than it initially seems. While the two women appear outwardly genial, Lauren is secretly nursing a decades-long grudge about Alice’s adolescent bullying. Lauren also resents Alice for her tacit acceptance of her own daughter’s bullying; Alice’s daughter has viciously targeted Lauren’s daughter and was able to escape consequences because of Alice’s intervention.