Perhaps because Apples Never Fall is written by an Australian writer and the story is set Down Under, a significant aspect of the story is almost universally overlooked by professional reviewers and bloggers alike. It could just be a case that that most of the world is not as familiar with Aussie law enforcement as they are with American cops courtesy of hours of movies and TV shows taking crime in America as the subject.
Or maybe it is because Australian law enforcement officers take a completely different approach than American cops. That seems unlikely, however, since Canadian and British cop shows are not substantially different from their American cousins relative to the fundamental approach of investigation. Not that it matters that this story is specifically set in Australia; readers in American—or Canada or the U.K.—can easily read into their cultural awareness. In the end, it really does not matter that the characters are Australian because the problem here is interchangeable and global.
Then again, perhaps the explanation as simple as writer branding. Author Liane Moriarty published nine novels between 2004 and 2021 and thanks to certain similarities connecting each of them she has become a writer who is also a brand. Her brand is not as easily classified as Stephen King (horror writer) or John Grisham (legal thriller) because the similarities have less to do with genre based on plot than with genre based on milieu. Her novels are about the idiosyncratic difficulties of modern domesticity with stories inevitably exploring marriages, family relationships, friendships and various and assorted external Others that enter in this upscale world and complicated matters. Apples Never Fall is no different except that it is more precisely focused on familial interrelationships rather than friendships.
Most reviews tend to focus on the Other in this particular story—actually identified as such, but allusively—as arriving in the form of the somewhat mysterious and ambiguous character of Savannah. It is the arrival of Savannah that tosses the Delaney siblings into a heightened state of dysfunction, but the truth of the matter is that Savannah is not the external agency which causes disruption here.
The matriarch of the clan, Joy Delaney, goes missing without a word to anyone or a trace of what happened. Admittedly, it is the concern for their missing mother and the vague feeling of disquiet that their father may possibly be involved that brings the cops into the story, but once there it is the systemic investigative incompetence and apathetic approach to thinking outside narrow constrained thought processing that sparks tensions between the siblings and raises suspicion to a red alert status in the community.
It seems like it takes about a day for the cops to make the spectacular leap to assuming Stan Delaney is guilty of murdering his wife. And now here is the important—the vital and essential thing to keep in mind—about this leap. As they pursue this line of reasoning, there is no trial-worthy evidence to be found that that proves Joy Delaney’s mysterious disappearance is not the result of her simply deciding on her to disappear for a little bit. Needless to say, there is absolutely not even a shred of evidence to support any contention that her husband murdered her.
What is driving this aspect of the narrative is old-fashioned, unimaginative thinking of law enforcement which helps to explain why most criminals only ever get caught thanks to the stupid decision to fly through a green light or drive with a busted taillight. Most crimes get solved not because of brilliant detective work, but by sheer accident and one of the biggest reasons for this failure is that given the choice between doggedly pursuing what they know has been the case in the past rather than working hard in consideration of a more likely alternative possibility, law enforcement always takes the easy way out. In this case, statistics and experience have created this unbreaking idea that if a wife goes missing and it is not immediately clear what happened then the husband did it. What is the consequence of this unblinking commitment to the fundamental precept that if something happens one way in the past then it will always happen the same way in the future?
Crimes go unsolved. Criminals get away with it. Innocent people’s lives are ruined. And families break apart. But, apparently, this is a situation that is of such little significance that reviews of the book almost to the last one overlook the significance of this aspect of how the Other invades domestic tranquility this time around in Moriarty’s world which is only Australian on a technicality. If your neighbors speak English, it could just as easily have been set wherever you call home.
