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    Force of Nature: A Novel
    Force of Nature: A Novel
    Force of Nature: A Novel
    Ebook411 pages6 hours

    Force of Nature: A Novel

    By Jane Harper

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    "I love Jane Harper's Australia-based mysteries." —Stephen King
    Goodreads Choice Award Finalist (Mystery & Thriller, 2018)
    BookBrowse Best Books of 2018
    Winner of the Prix Polar Award for Best International Novel
    BookRiot’s 25 Best Suspense Books from 2018
    Davitt Awards shortlist for Adult Crime Novel 2018
    Dead Good Reads shortlist for Best Small Town Mystery 2018

    Five women go on a hike. Only four return. Jane Harper, the New York Times bestselling author of The Dry, asks: How well do you really know the people you work with?

    When five colleagues are forced to go on a corporate retreat in the wilderness, they reluctantly pick up their backpacks and start walking down the muddy path.

    But one of the women doesn’t come out of the woods. And each of her companions tells a slightly different story about what happened.

    Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk has a keen interest in the whereabouts of the missing hiker. In an investigation that takes him deep into isolated forest, Falk discovers secrets lurking in the mountains, and a tangled web of personal and professional friendship, suspicion, and betrayal among the hikers. But did that lead to murder?

    “Force of Nature bristles with wit; it crackles with suspense; it radiates atmosphere. An astonishing book from an astonishing writer.”
    —A.J. Finn, author of The Woman in the Window

    Select praise for The Dry:
    "One of the most stunning debuts I've ever read. Every word is near perfect. Read it!"
    —David Baldacci, #1 New York Times bestselling author

    “A breathless page-turner … Ms. Harper has made her own major mark.”
    —The New York Times

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateFeb 6, 2018
    ISBN9781250105646
    Author

    Jane Harper

    Jane Harper is the author of four internationally bestselling Australian mysteries, including The Dry. Her books are published in 40 territories and have sold more than 3 million copies worldwide. Jane has won numerous top awards including the CWA Gold Dagger, the British Book Awards Crime and Thriller Book of the Year and the Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year. The 2021 movie adaptation of The Dry, starring Eric Bana, is one of the highest grossing Australian films of all time. Jane worked as a print journalist for 13 years in both Australia and the UK, and now lives in Melbourne with her husband, daughter and son.

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    Reviews for Force of Nature

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    • 4/5
      In Force of Nature, Jane Harper’s gripping follow-up to her award-winning debut, The Dry, we are once again led through a complex, multi-layered case by federal agent Aaron Falk. Ten employees of BaileyTennants, a conglomerate with international reach and vast financial resources, are taking part in a wilderness bonding exercise operated by “Executive Adventures,” trudging through the remote bushland of the Giralang Ranges, near Melbourne. The two teams, one of five women, the other of five men, will hike the trail over several days, stopping at established camps along the way for meals and supplies. However, everything goes wrong for the women’s team. In poor weather they get turned around and lose the trail, and the situation worsens when latent hostilities boil over within the group. When four team members eventually straggle out of the bush—well behind schedule, with each suffering various scrapes, bruises and cuts—Alice Russell is missing. Aaron and his partner, Carman Cooper, work in a unit investigating financial crimes, and it turns out that BaileyTennants is in their crosshairs and that Alice is their mole on the inside, a whistleblower strategically situated to get them the evidence they need to build their case. But does this have anything to do with her disappearance? As in her first novel, Harper constructs her story with great patience, dropping ambiguous clues into a volatile mix, revealing troubling details as the investigation moves in several directions at once, and sending her detectives down one blind alley after another in their pursuit of the truth. Another similarity to The Dry is the crucial role played by setting. Harper’s Giralang Ranges are fictional but are drawn with persuasive clarity. And to add to the atmosphere of menace, twenty years earlier, the Giralang Ranges were the stomping ground of a psychopathic killer named Martin Kovac, who left a trail of young women’s bodies in his wake before being caught, tried and convicted. By the time Alice goes missing, Kovac is long dead, but his grisly crimes cast a creepy and portentous shadow over Falk’s investigation and add spice to the rampant speculation over what has happened to Alice. Harper splits the story into two threads: one that follows Falk and Cooper’s investigation into the circumstances surrounding Alice’s disappearance, and a second that takes us inside the women’s fateful trek through the bush. Aaron Falk, though staid, rooted, and emotionally reticent, is an appealingly haunted protagonist, carrying with him a weighty baggage of personal regrets and failures. Force of Nature is a spellbinding work of fiction that more than delivers on the promise of Jane Harper’s first novel and establishes her as a master of psychological suspense.
    • 4/5
      FORCE OF NATURE is Jane Harper’s second novel and it features Aaron Falk.I was happy to see Detective Falk play a part in this book. He is a loner and very troubled by events that took place 20 years previously in his home town. The scars are still visible, both mentally and physically. He is thoughtful, dedicated and very adept at ‘reading’ people. I like his quietness and intelligence.As in Ms. Harper’s other books, the landscape plays a leading role. We aren’t in the dry outback this time, but in a dense, more rain forest type environment. It is oppressive and dangerous.A corporate retreat and wilderness hiking expedition takes two teams into ‘the bush’ for several days of supposed bonding and problem-solving. Things deteriorate very quickly and the police and search and rescue teams take over.The characters are very well drawn and detailed, as are the many-layered plot points.Although this title did not have the same brutal intensity as the other two titles by Ms. Harper, I was engrossed by page 1 and would heartily recommend it. It is not to be missed.
    • 2/5
      I didn't read The Dry first, but I don't think it matters. I could tell there was a lot of backstory surrounding Aaron Falk, but it wasn't necessary for this book. That being said, the author could have added a little detail for those that did not read the first book (what happened with his hand?). The clear shout-outs to the presents for the kids and his friend at the end are likely from the first book but that didn't seem as relevant.

      Back to this book. To me, it dragged. The story dragged and the author seemed to drag it out, especially toward the end. The whole concept seemed pretty far-fetched (really? you send people out with no good maps, walkie-talkies, way to contact anyone if they need help?). There were also too many storylines going on without a lot of depth to any of them. There was the case Falk and his partner were working on, which we got little-to-no information about. There was the camping storyline, obviously. And then there was the storyline with the daughters of two of the women camping. These secondary storylines weren't fleshed out and really lacked a lot that could have made this so much better. The storylines of the women, told in different perspectives, didn't weave together nicely (whatever happened to Jill's storyline? It just disappeared).

      The concept was ok, but the book dragged.
    • 3/5
      Force of Nature is Jane Harper’s second novel featuring Australian Federal Agent, Aaron Falk. Her first, The Dry, was a phenomenal success (you can read my review here) and Force of Nature is a solid follow up.In Force of Nature, Falk, and his new partner Carmen Cooper, are investigating a company for money laundering. They are expecting to wrap the case in a matter of days, with help from insider, Alice Russell, when she goes missing during a corporate retreat.The story unfolds through multiple perspectives, as it moves between the events leading up to Alice’s disappearance and the current active investigation. This allows Harper to introduce several possible motives for Alice’s disappearance, and develop an interesting mystery that kept me guessing until the end. Though I thought the pace was a little slow to begin with, the tension builds incrementally, and the plot is elegantly resolved.Falk didn’t have the strong presence in this novel that I was expecting. He is peripheral to most of the action, and there were no new insights offered into his character. Neither was his partner, Carmen, particularly memorable.I think I may have been more invested in the story if I had liked Alice. Though well drawn, she is an unpleasant character and I didn’t much care whether she was found, or not. I didn’t have any difficulty visualising Alice’s companions on the hike, Harper’s characterisations, and the dynamics between them, were interesting and complex.Set largely in the Giralang Ranges of Victoria, Harper does a commendablejob of evoking the close, wet, and disorientating atmosphere of the Australian bush. As in The Dry, the setting is not simply the background of the story, but an integral part of it.Force of Nature is well written, with a mystery that is skillfully crafted and compelling. I’m looking forward to Harper’s next Book in the series
    • 4/5
      Jane Harper writes wonderful novels that take place in Australia. This is the second of the Aaron Falk series. In this, five women go on a job related endurance trip to the outback. One (Alice) goes missing. Falk is a police investigator who happens to be using Alice as an informant to get information about the owners of the company she works for and so he gets involved in the search for her. The novel segues between the narrative of the 4 days the women were in the wilderness and the search taking place to find them. There is a lot going on in the book and Harper does a great job of weaving a suspenseful tale and deepening the portrayal of Falk, as we will continue to see in her subsequent books.
    • 5/5
      Jane Harper proves that her debut novel “The Dry” was not a fluke. “Force of Nature” is an excellent crime thriller and shows Harper in fine form in this second novel in the Aaron Falk series.Aaron and his partner Carmen are called out to a wilderness retreat, where a corporate team-building exercise has taken a turn for the worse. Five women went into the wilderness, and only four returned. Where is the missing woman, and what happened?Harper is a master of atmospheric description, which she demonstrated in “The Dry.” She is so good at pulling the reader into the book’s setting that in “Force of Nature” I could really feel myself there in the cold rain and unyielding wilderness. And even with so many characters to deal with in this book, Harper manages to do just enough character development to make the reader care about what happens to each one.I look forward to Ms. Harper’s next book!
    • 3/5
      Second of the Aaron Falk Australian crime mystery series. An informant in a financial fraud case goes missing during an executive adventure retreat with her company. Five women are in the group who are sent into the bush with no guide and little experience in outdoor survival skills. They range from one of the owners of the company to a data entry person. The missing woman has a brash, impatient personality which provides motive for a lot of people in the book.Jane Harper writes a good suspense story and in this one she nails the characterizations of the women in the group. I'll be reading (listening to) more of this series. The narrator of the audiobook is good, but the volume tends to go up and down on the version that I had.
    • 5/5
      Couldn’t put this one down. Falk returns to investigate what happened to his informant when she disappears on a weekend hike with 4 other women. Suspenseful and well written. Human nature and psychology insights.
    • 5/5
      After reading The Dry, I couldn't wait for Harper's next book! And I have to say that I prefer Force of Nature to The Dry. Forget your basic "who dun it". Force of Nature is full of secrets and guilt that snowball to the very end.
    • 5/5
      Finally I've laid hands on number two in the Australian series by Jane Harper. The library had a long waiting list, now it's my turn.'The Dry' impressed me although I was hesitant about Aaron Falk as a character, but the Australian setting and the tight writing and clever plot carried me along. I'm pleased to say that Aaron Falk is coming out of his shell in this novel and I feel less inclined to shake him!Working with his colleague, Carmen, for the financial investigative side of the Federal police, Falk is trying to obtain documents from a 'mole'. It's difficult and the pressure is on when the 'mole' goes with her company on one of these management bush treks and disappears. Has she been murdered by the company director? What has happened?Again we have Harper's tricky plot full of surprises. She writes well and makes the reader feel the Australian bush and the terrors of being lost in it. We have a bunch of complex 3D characters and some raw emotions and it was hard to guess whodunit.The novel is a stand alone but I'd advise readers to start with 'The Dry' and then read this one just to get a more complete picture of the main character.A great read for anyone and especially for those who like mysteries.
    • 4/5
      I like Ms Harper's way of taking what is unique about Australia and using it for her plots. I didn't like this quite as much as "The Dry" but it was still very enjoyable.
    • 4/5
      A good read, but not as impressive as The Dry. The claustrophobic intensity is not there, and deprived of a personal stake in the story, returning protagonist Lee Falk becomes just a run of the mill copper. The story does well enough with its tale of the 5 female workers from a company under investigation by the AFP who go on a bush trek as a team-building exercise, and only 4 return. A dead serial killer and his never-discovered 4th victim add additional tension to the story. The writing is fluid and the characters believable if not particularly likeable. Its a slick piece of writing, unfortunately the tense gripping quality of The Dry is not there. Still worth reading though.
    • 4/5
      I loved her thriller, The Dry, for a first novel it was fantastic. Actually would have been fantastic even if it wasn't her first, but even more so since it was. Excited to read this, her second, and I'll just say that the infamous sophomore slump is not in evidence. This time Aaron Falk and his partner Carmen are called to the Giralang Range, where a woman is missing. A team building trip, men go one way, five men go another, all to meet up at the end of three days. According to the outfit managing the trip, it should have been simple, so what went wrong?We follow the investigation, with the police, the searchers and Falk, alternating with daily missives from the women who were on the trip. So much going on behind the scenes, secrets, jealousy, grudges, but what happened and when? Quite suspenseful, and terrifying at times. Not graphic at all, just wonderful writing that shows, not just tells. Very atmospheric, the descriptions of the scenery were very vivid. Though this does not have the same personal connection to Falk as her first, there is still some introspective musings about his past that this location evokes. There are layers upon layers, misdirections, and everytime something new is discovered, there is still more waiting.Harper does a fantastic job in building her stories, they build gradually, and at the same time they are understated until the denoument. No big gory, or shocking scenes, just good storytelling done right. I enjoy this series immensely, and now eagerly await the next.ARC from Flatiron books.Publishes February 6, 2018.
    • 5/5
      What makes the writing of Jane Harper so appealing to me is the very balanced and articulate style that flows with so little effort (or so it seems) from her writing. In "Force of Nature" she expertly relates a story in both the present and past timeline drawing them together in a nail biting conclusion and in a sleight of hand exposes the perpetrator.Two teams from BaileyBennets embark on a weekend of outdoor pursuits and teambuilding along the Mirror Falls trail in the Giralang Ranges outside Melbourne. Alice Russell was supposed to deliver important documents to Federal agent Aaron Falk and his assistant Carmen Cooper and by so doing exposing malpractice at BB. Regrettably at the end of the weekend of executive bonding one employee, Alice Russell, fails to emerge and there is great fear for her safety and welfare. Her fellow friends and colleagues appear to be shocked and fear she may have walked alone into the unforgiving wooded and bush environment. As the two agents dig deeper all is not as it should be amongst the hikers and slowly they begin to uncover a web of treachery not only prevalent in the BaileyBennets work place but also stretching back many years.For those of you familiar with the writing of Jane Harper and in particular her excellent first novel "The Dry" it is refreshing to see not only the return of Aaron Falk but to learn a little more about his childhood with his late father whom he loved dearly. If we add to this a serial killer known as Marin Kovac who butchered and buried a number of victims in the Giralang Ranges then we have all the ingredients for an ingenious mystery. I can honestly say that Jane Harper once again kept me glued to this thrilling story as the layers of friendship and deceit are uncovered exposing an underbelly of hatred and envy. I had no idea who the killer was until revealed and that surely must be the mark of a master storyteller. As in her first novel Mz Harper uses the harsh and beautiful Australian landscape to great affect..."a curtain of white water. A river tumbled over a cliff edge and into the pool far beneath them."......"The neat trees lining the nature strip looked like plastic models compared with the primal lushness that had lurked over them for the past three days."....."The air was so crisp Jill felt she could almost touch it, and the freshwater spray cooled her cheeks. It was an hypnotic sight, and as she drank it in she almost felt the weight of her pack lift a little from her shoulders.".................Many thanks to Little Brown Book Group and netgalley for a gratis copy in exchange for an honest review and that is what I have written.
    • 3/5
      Kept my attention but wasn't as good as "The Dry". I'm not evenly remotely interested in hiking in Australia. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      “When five colleagues are forced to go on a corporate retreat in the wilderness, they reluctantly pick up their backpacks and start walking down the muddy path.But one of the women doesn’t come out of the woods. And each of her companions tells a slightly different story about what happened.”(From the book jacket)The men and women are separated and they are meant to come of the wilderness at the same meet up point. This is supposed to be a team-building event with the Bailey’s company and I can say for sure, I’m certainly glad I have never been forced to participate in such an exercise. The women are so very different from one another, some with secrets and some vying for the alpha role once they are lost.“Later, the four remaining women could fully agree on only two things. One: No one saw the bushland swallow up Alice Russell. And two: Alice had a mean streak so sharp it could cut you.”Alice was a real can of worms. I did not have this figured out early at all so this was quite a good read for me. On their own in the bushland it’s easy to panic. “It’s the panic that gets you. Makes it hard to trust what you’re seeing.”The weather plays a big part in this story. It’s freezing cold, it rains, it makes it miserable for search parties looking for Alice. The isolation the women feel is clearly conveyed as you read about their part of the story.“Jill sometimes thought that in another time and place, she and Alice might have been friends. At other times, she thought not. Being around Alice was like owning an aggressive breed of dog. Loyal when it suited, but you had to stay on your toes.”Food and wine weren’t mentioned much but there was this:Beef stew made by the campfire. “A kookaburra perched nearby, watching Beth with her black eyes. Beth picked up a strip of beef from one of the abandoned packets and tossed it toward the bird, who scooped it up with the tip of her beak.”I didn’t know they ate meat!Aaron made dinner for Carmen. Spaghetti Bolognese and red wine. Sauce was from scratch too. So I had thought of making the spaghetti dish but we had Linguine Pompeii so, that’s the representative dish.(Photo on my blog)This is the second book in the series starring Federal Agent Aaron Falk and I sincerely hope there will be many more stories to follow. He’s a law enforcement with the specialty in financial crimes.He used to be SWAT, a bad ass cop who busted in and arrested the bad guys. One time his team went in and a malnourished old man was sitting in a tattered chair. There was graffiti on his walls, there was a drug kitchen set up and thugs living in his home. The man thought one of the criminals was his grandson. Dementia was setting in and these guys took full advantage of it. Aaron realized later all this could have been caught with a look at his financial records, bank statements and charges.It goes way beyond that too – follow the money trail and you find more than small drug operations. Prostitution, pornography, large scale drug operations. Follow the money. Falk was following up on contracts Alice was meant to get from the company.I liked The Dry better than this one but I will happily read another starring Federal Agent Falk.
    • 4/5
      Five women and five men, in separate groups, go on a corporate survival retreat in rural Australia. Only four women return, and the series' main character, a federal financial police officer, is pulled in because the missing woman was helping with an investigation into the company's finances. The author uses flashbacks interspersed into the current time line to build suspense, and it works very well. The mystery of the woman's disappearance is really interesting, compounded as it is with possibilities that she a) was found out by the company and murdered; b) was kidnapped by the son of a famous serial killer who once roamed these hills; or c) is lost or been injured. The flashbacks and main storyline each inch towards the conclusion, and it is unexpected, which is always fun, so the mystery itself is really rewarding. My main problem with the book is that the five women all dislike and distrust each other, and it's a hard narrative to read, with all the sniping and, yes, even a few brawls. It just doesn't seem all that believable. All-in-all, though, a more-than-decent suspense thriller.
    • 2/5
      This book appeared on a number of lists of new thrillers that should be read. I had read Ms. Harper's first book The Dry, and it was okay, so thought I'd give this one a try.I like Aaron Falk and his partner Carmen, but that's pretty much where it ended for me. Perhaps it was the back and forth from just before the crime and disappearance, and after when the search was on for the missing woman, but I didn't think the book was very exciting. It was easy to figure out what actually happened at that lonely cabin in the woods, but it took forever to get there. No excitement, no tension, and really no plot. I'm sorry, but I cannot recommend this book.
    • 5/5
      The second in this series centering on Aaron Falk, Australian detective, wraps up such disparate elements as corporate team-building, substance abuse recovery, financial scalliwaggery, and revenge internet photo harassment, into a finely woven suspenseful plot. Chapters alternate clearly and cleanly between current events and the crime. Harper's sophomore effort is just as strong as her first, a good sign, and there's certainly plenty of outback to keep exploring.
    • 5/5
      Australian Federal Police officer Aaron Falk, the focus of Harper's first novel, The Dry, is back in Melbourne recuperating from his adventures in that book. He and his partner, Carmen, have been working hard on a money-laundering case, but their progress is stymied when a key witness goes missing during one of those dreadful "executive trust-building" weekends in a wilderness area. Is her disappearance related to the case she was helping Aaron and Carmen build against her bosses? And where on earth could she have gone?Harper is a master of scene-setting. Just as her descriptions of the rural drought-ravaged landscape in The Dry left me panting for water, here she skillfully conveys the remote impenetrability and the needle-in-a-haystack nature of the Australian bush. She uses a flashback device to slowly clue readers into what happened on the retreat that led to Alice's disappearance, while keeping us updated on the progress of the search in real time. Sometimes that sort of split focus leaves a reader disappointed when the focus shifts from the more compelling storyline to the lesser one, but in this case I was eager to follow both threads equally.Force of Nature was just published in February, two years after The Dry. That does not bode well for how long I will be impatiently waiting for Aaron Falk's next adventure.
    • 3/5
      Read for Book Club. Not as enjoyable as The Dry. Character development of Aaron Falk was too lightweight, so no investment in continuing with 'his' series. Female characters were very wooden at times and the relationships between them as 'the problem' continued became less and less credible - as if they were still back in the office. Irritating alternating time period structure was annoying at times, with frequent shorter chapters later on, which felt almost YA-ish, to achieve cliff-hanger chapter endings. No real feelingof the setting was conveyed through the use of language, just laughable, 'oooh it's a bit scary out in the bush, isn't it' type dialogue.
    • 4/5
      Five female co-workers set off on a team building weekend in Australia, but only four of them make it back. Book 2 in the Aaron Falk series. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      Harper has boldly changed the styles, pacing and structure for second outing of Aaron Falks and for me it worked well creating a slicker, more tense mystery than the Dry with more than a hint of a female Lord of the Flies. Plot in a Nutshell A corporate retreat goes badly wrong when only four of the five women in one group return. The story alternates between what happened over the days they were away and the relationships and tensions between the group and the investigation to find the missing women. Alice, the missing hiker is key to an ongoing investigation pulling Falks out from the city and into the wilderness. Thoughts I really enjoyed Harper’s debut novel, a traditional police procedural where she used the drought in Falks hometown to create a stifling backdrop to a small town crime. I was less sure about Falks himself who I struggled to warm to in the first novel. For his second outing Harper has maintained her ability to create atmosphere through setting. Here a claustrophobic, overgrown, damp wilderness becomes a creepy character adding at times a sense of horror as much as mystery. Whilst still exploring a little of Falks character, particularly via conversations with his partner we see less of him as a protagonist in this novel, in favour of developing the characters of the five female hikers through both the flashbacks to their interactions and their recollections as they speak with the police on their return. The mystery takes front and centre rather than the investigation. This allows us to see a lot more of the relationships between the group which really worked for me. Ultimately this was great mystery story, for much of it I really was not sure what had happened and what the outcome was likely to be. There was a myriad of red herrings for the reader, and indeed the police to follow which meant it was an exciting read until the end. I look forward to what comes next!
    • 5/5
      Five women set off into the Jiralong Ranges bush on a company retreat. They get lost, miss their rendezvous point, and, for a few days, wander about without food and short on water. When they stagger out of the bush, there are only four and they all deny having seen the fifth, Alice, wander off. And it seems Alice was about to turn over incriminating evidence on the company to investigator Aaron Falk and his partner, Carmen. Further adding to the intrigue, the Jiralong Ranges had been the haunt of a serial killer of four women, one of who was never found. The killer is now in prison, but his son disappeared a few years ago. Could he be lurking in the Jiralong Ranges? And the daughters of Alice and another of the women are involved in a sexting scandal at their school. While trying to find the missing evidence Falk is dealing with the suppressed feelings about his dead father.Many balls in the air here, but Harper manages them deftly. This is Harper’s second book after her excellent debut novel The Dry. In The Dry, a heat wave and drought is the backdrop of the story and almost a character itself. In Force of Nature, the cold, rainy Jiralong Ranges are a forbidding presence. This is a terrific book. It alternates between scenes of the lost women and Falk and Carmen’s effort to find out what happened. The pace is excellent and it quickens as the end approaches. It kept me reading well past my bed time. I anxiously await her next book.
    • 4/5
      Five women go for a hike in the Australian bush; four return. The hike is a corporate retreat and no one wants to be there, least of all Alice, the woman who disappears. Aaron Falk, the detective first encountered in The Dry, Jane Harper’s debut, is investigating the company that sponsored the retreat, and Alice is one of his sources. Was she murdered because of her involvement? Or something else? This area of wilderness is haunted by memories of a long ago serial killer, who died in prison. Is her disappearance connected somehow to those murders? Tangled personal and professional relationships and an atmospheric location make this a satisfying mystery.
    • 4/5
      I'm giving this 4* because it was a compelling read, but the ending was a bit of an anticlimax.Set in a remote part of Australia, a group of women go on a work team-building exercise involving hiking and camping (a nightmare as far as I am concerned even if it had all gone smoothly), but when they eventually reach the rendezvous point at the end, one of them is missing. The missing woman was a whistleblower, helping police officer Falk to implicate the firm all the women work for in a money-laundering scheme. Was this a factor in her disappearance?There are chapters describing the women's experience, interspersed with ones featuring Falk and the others involved in the search and rescue mission. This structure worked well, but it wasn't really a police procedural or even a mystery - more a case of persuading the remaining women to come clean about what had really happened. Bonus points for creating such an unlikeable victim.
    • 4/5
      Difficult to follow a great book like The Dry, but Force of Nature more than lived up to that, for me. Pacey, gripping thriller set in (fictional) Australian wilds. Five women head out on a team building trek, but only four make it back to the rendezvous point. Matching the story of the women chapter for chapter, the story of the two investigators from the police fraud office, who are working with the woman who disappeared. Having spent more than my fair share of time lost with a map somewhere a lot less difficult to navigate than Australia, for me Harper perfectly captured the panicky quality of a group trying to navigate unfamiliar terrain, both in terms of map and characters.I also loved the black humour she found in a relatively dark story."Jill watched the backs of their heads and shifted her pack. She could feel the straps rubbing on her shoulders. The man in the shop had told her that they were made from special breathable material for added comfort. The memory of that conversation infused Jill with a sense of deep and lasting betrayal."Recommended.
    • 4/5
      After reading Jane Harper’s debut novel “The Dry” I could not wait to get my hands on the next installment in the Aaron Falk series. In “Force of Nature” Falk and his colleague Carmen Cooper investigate BaileyTennants, a company suspected of money laundering. The special agents recruit BaileyTennants employee Alice Russell in the hope that she will give them the information and documents they need to finally close the case. In the middle of the investigation, however, Alice disappears during a company team building hike. Her fellow colleagues, all bruised and battered, claim they do not know where Alice is nor why she was so anxious to leave in the first place. The only thing they all agree on is that she was not liked by many and had made a few enemies.While I did enjoy the storyline and mystery aspect of the book, I only gave it four (3.75 if I had the option) out of five stars. The reason for that is threefold with the first being a mere personal preference. For whatever reason I enjoyed the dusty, hot, and bare setting of “The Dry” a lot more than the rainy, muddy forests of “A Force of Nature”. It just appealed to me more and I noticed I was a lot more engaged in the story. The second reason is that I do not like the situation that Harper put her characters in; simply because it’s nothing new and rather stereotypical. How many books and screenplays have been written about a group of people getting lost in the woods and disagreeing about what to do (add the occasional odd noise that the characters hear every now and then and one cannot help but think of “Blair Witch”)?. For a writer as creative and talented as Harper, I simply expected more. Finally, I was not a fan of the way the story was told, namely alternating chapters of the present investigation and past events. While this is definitely a good way to slowly unravel the mystery of what happened to Alice, I had to drag myself through the chapters taking place in the woods compared to those involving Falk and Cooper which I found very interesting.That being said, I really enjoy Harper’s writing style and characters. When reading the dialogue it often feels as if it is a transcript of an actual conversation rather than a made-up text. Her characters are very real and average people that are enjoyable to read. Also, the identity of the killer remains a big question mark until the end and which really adds to the overall reading experience. Would recommend.
    • 5/5
      Five women go on a hike, out of the office on a team building exercise. Bree, Beth, Jill and Lauren all come back, late and with injuries. Alice however is not with them. Where is she and what has happened. Aaron Faulk has a special interest in Alice and has to find out what really happened.This is the second book to feature Aaron Faulk. The first, The Dry was one of my favourite reads last year. This second book is as good as if not better.The story is told back and forth with the search for Alice and what happened when the five women were out hiking. I especially enjoyed the parts of the story about the women whilst they were out hiking. Without sounding cliché this book really was a page turner. I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen. I didn't guess anything at all but events do all come together and the clues were there.This book for me was very entertaining and a good solid read. If I hadn't have read the first one it wouldn't matter very much as this one can be read as a stand alone, but I would recommend both books by Jane Harper and will look for future works.
    • 4/5
      Just as the characters in this suspenseful tale are trying to find a trail that will take them back to safety, so will the readers of this story endeavor to find the trail that will enlighten them as to what exactly happened. Five men and five women take separate trails in what is supposed to be a bonding experience. The men return in good spirits. The women, when they finally show up hours late, are hungry, dirty, hurt, and missing one of their members. The novel vacillates from current time back to the four-day hike. Little by little, the reader is exposed to what went on during those four days. While trained rescuers are looking for Alice, we gradually learn more about the back stories of the individuals who make up the dynamics of the groups, both men and women, as federal agents try to determine why Alice went missing, and if they had unintentionally caused it. This page-turner will keep you interested as follow the correct clues while discarding the red herrings. Though a follow on to The Dry, this novel is complete in itself.

    Book preview

    Force of Nature - Jane Harper

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