We hear a lot about building team spirit. Companies love the idea of reinforcing bonds between their employees to get the best of them. I am not against the idea. I can spend a day playing water sports or cardboard games. But going on a three-days hike? Count me out! No matter how charming they make it sound (or rather how “important” if you don’t want to take the door), I’d rather eat my weight in Brussels sprouts than to sacrifice precious days out in the wild life with people I am not sure I would trust with a stapler in a perfectly safe open space.

Yet, when I put the book down, it felt as I had actually been on a hike. A very special one! Force of Nature is my first Jane Harper story, and it surely won’t be my last, even though it has reinforced my paranoid side!

Ten people at the starting line. Nine make it back. I’m not a math genius but when the book offered me this problem to solve, I shivered, both with dread and excitement. This feeling never left me, thanks to the different narrations and the coming back and forth in time element that only enhanced the experience of the entire story. Don’t expect a chapter to release tension and leave you breathe for a while. Every part is filled with life in all its form.

He was reminded of an old proverb. Something about trying to catch feathers scattered in the wind.

The search, of course. Thorough, realistic, scary. I could imagine the breaking news on my TV, I imagined myself stuck in the middle of nowhere, a hundred scenarios ran through my mind as I read, helped by the fact we don’t truly get the missing person’s point of view, rather an outsider’s take on what happens, what is felt or not, and how things look like. The author masterfully plays with her characters, like pawns on a very icy chess game. Each chapter is devoured like a TV show scene; details, snippets of information you don’t understand, human dynamics you must decipher as if your own life depended on it. I was breathless, climbing a mountain of questions and doubts.

Force of Nature. The more I walked into the story, the better I understood the title. Jane Harper, using a sample of ten people and their close outside connections, gives you the ugly truth about human nature. Is it really a force? Have we actually grown out of those primal needs and fears our ancestors and animals live with? When faced with the worst, how would YOU react? I am not talking about the impact of one incident, but the accumulation of tiny things; stinging remarks, looks exchanged, whispered words, exhaustion. When mother nature decides to crash the party, too, you can be sure masks fall and anything can turn into a weapon.

Everything starts to look the same after a few days, makes it hard to trust what you’re seeing.

Force of Nature is one hell of a book. I mean it. I am not very brave, and this book reminded why I prefer to stay home with books and vicariously live through the safety of my pages. I don’t dread nightmares, vampires, or snakes. Our biggest enemy is ourselves. What we are, what we become, how life shapes us and how it affects every part of our body and mind. Every word in Force of Nature hurts, stings, gives you goosebumps, reminds you of things done or not done, of regrets and mistakes, of decisions taken too soon, or not taken at all. Jane Harper dissects her little human beings, throws in a terrible old crime story, two unconventional cops to spice things up, and give you the fright of your life.

‘I don’t know. Maybe we can’t help who we are. Maybe we’re born a certain way and there’s nothing you can do about it.’

I’ve never been on a team building exercise like this one in Force of Nature – thank goodness! This one for employees of an accountancy firm, BaileyTennants is a really bad one – two groups, five men and five women with no experience of hiking are sent out into the outback, on their own, for a few days. The only training they were given was a half-day course in navigation for one member of each team. And they weren’t allowed to take their phones with them. Inevitably the worst happened – the women’s group got lost and when they eventually returned one person, Alice Russell, was missing.

Once I had got over my disbelief that such a terrible team building exercise would actually happen, this is fiction after all, I found that I loved this book, set in the fictional Giralang Ranges in Australia, seeing the Mirror Falls roaring down from a cliff edge into the pool fifteen metres below, the eucalyptus trees and the dense bush, and the breathtaking views of rolling hills and valleys as the gum trees give way, with the sun hanging low in the distance.

In fact I soon became completely absorbed in the mystery of what happened to Alice. The narrative moves between two different time periods that gradually merge into one. The descriptions of both the locations and the characters are wholly convincing – it was as though I was there in the bush, with the women struggling to get back on course and find their way back to the rendezvous point. I could feel their frustration and fear of the elements and whatever danger was out there in the bush, as their food and water ran out and they struggled desperately to survive. Their relationships, not good at the start, rapidly deteriorate as underlying jealousies and resentments come out into the open and results in violence.

Equally convincing is the search party, with Federal Agent Aaron Falk and his colleague Carmen Cooper from the financial investigation unit in Melbourne. They were involved in the search because Alice, the missing woman, was a whistle blower, helping them to uncover an elaborate money-laundering scheme run by BaileyTennants, the company that employs her and the other women.

It’s as much a character study as it is a mystery. Alice is a very unpopular person and any one of the other women could have been responsible for her disappearance. The tension and suspense is carried through to the end – an end that I thought I’d worked out, but of course I hadn’t got it right.

This is the second of Jane Harper’s Aaron Falk’s novels. The first is The Dry, which I haven’t read yet. So I was pleased to find that Force of Nature works very well as a standalone book. There are a few references to what I think must have happened in The Dry, but nothing that gave away the plot of that book. I’ll definitely read The Dry as soon as possible now.

My thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for my review copy.

Excellent. I enjoyed this book, it was quite different to 'The Dry', but equally as gripping. Very well written and the characters were believable.

This scenario sounds like my worst nightmare - an outward-bound, team-building exercise with your work colleagues.

But it isn't a day's yomp through the British countryside. These five women have to spend four days, and nights, in the Australian bush. No phone signal, no back up, and if they miss the checkpoints there is no guarantee they'll find food, water or shelter. They're on their own. Left to their own devices.

When the women reach the final rendezvous, they are hours late, exhausted and terrified - what's more, there's one of them missing. What's happened to Alice?

The search begins, and federal police agent Aaron Falk watches intently as the events unfold, his anxiety building.

Alice is the whistleblower in his case against the company she worked for. Had he put her in danger? Were others aware of her role? Had she more secrets to reveal? Did she have the documents he needs?

The story unfolds both in the present moment, following Falk piece together the incidents leading up to Alice's disappearance, at the same time as getting alongside the women in all that they experience in the preceding four days. Each thread is as compelling, as atmospheric and as perfectly paced as the other.

It's a case of clearing your diary to read this. You won't be able to put it down until you reach the final reveal in the very last pages. The tension and suspense is intense as the levels of fear, suspicion and violence build. Far from being a satisfactory follow-up to 'The Dry', it's arguably even better! A brilliant read!

4,5 Stars

I wasn’t as enchanted as many other readers by Jane Harper’s „The Dry“. It was just a nice but average suspense novel for me and I still don’t get all the excitement about it. But I enjoyed it enough to give the author another try. The blurb of “Force of Nature” sounded just like my kind of thing.

Last time we met Aaron Falk it was in a claustrophobic small town in the middle of nowhere in Australia while the land suffers heat and dryness. This time we are out in the open and it is cold and raining all the time. I was hooked almost immediately. There is a dark atmosphere surrounding this hike and the five women. You don’t know what happened to Alice. Did she just wander off on her own or happened something during their hike? Or is there a killer on the loose?

I enjoyed the different point of views and the two timelines. I found the past timeline where we see how this hike went so terribly wrong a bit more gripping. I am still not so much into Aaron Falk. His struggle with his relationship with his father felt very realistic. But I am happy that this book was not so much about him. I am not a huge fan of recurring characters and their personal development during several books. Usually I get bored with them or they start to annoy me. That’s the reason I avoid series. I am a junkie for good stories and that’s exactly what I got here.

I enjoyed this book very much. It is gripping and there are a lot of red herrings. Jane Harper has a very special prose and I am looking forward to read more from her.

I loved this book! What a page turner! It has one of the best first paragraphs that I have read in years. I read it aloud to my son who studied creative writing and he admired it too. This novel not only has a great plot and excellent characters but is so well written. I just wanted to stop everything I was doing to read it. There is lots of tension as five women are lost in the Australian bush with secrets and past grievances which come to the surface as their situation becomes more and more serious. I enjoyed the friendship between police officers Falk and Carmen as they try to unravel what has happened. Definitely worth reading and now I am going to buy the author’s previous novel, The Dry.

I named The Dry as one of my Top Books of 2017, so wild horses couldn't have kept me away from reading Force of Nature. Although it didn't quite match The Dry, in my opinion, it was still a great read. I apologise in advance for comparing Force of Nature to The Dry, but I blinking loved that book so will drop it in wherever I can.

Alice Russell joins her work colleagues on a team building corporate retreat. Now, anyone who has ever been on one of these will know just how much fun they are NOT! I always say that I spend enough time with them at work, I don't want to socialise with them in my free time (sorry, work 'mates'). So 10 colleagues set out to hike across the bush split into men’s and women’s camps. Alice, along with her colleagues Jill, Lauren and twins Beth and Bree, make up the women's camp. Nothing good is ever going to come of pitting 5 women against the elements and it isn't long before they turn on each other, resulting in Alice storming off. The others assume that she has made her way back to the meeting point but Alice never made it back and a search party is assembled. The reader knows that Alice's last phone call was to Aaron Falk, with Aaron putting pressure on Alice to 'get the contracts'. Did somebody silence Alice before she could deliver evidence to the police?

When the colleagues turn on each other, I could have pointed my finger at any one of them, as women are so vicious. The speed of implosion of the relationships was staggering, and frighteningly true to life. I could totally imagine this happening and I'm never going on a work outing ever again - I'm sure Jane Harper will write me a note (Yay!).

Back to comparisons with The Dry, the only reason I knocked one star off Force of Nature is that there just wasn't enough Aaron Falk in the book. He seemed like a secondary character so for anyone who hasn't read The Dry, they might not recognise him as the glue that binds the two. I would have liked a bit more about Falk so we could have developed his character a bit further.

Aaron Falk aside, Force of Nature is a mighty fine story that shows just how far women will go to protect themselves and their loved ones. Don't ever underestimate a woman - they have claws!

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

I loved Harper's "The Dry" and was delighted to find that in "Force of Nature" we meet the same character, now developing into a credible, flawed protagonist.
The setting evokes the Australian bush accurately and the crisis between the women does not surprise: it is a kind of "Lord of the Flies" for corporate retreats!!
The structure of now/then chapters works well to build the the tension and the collision of both is a satisfactory end. Loved the read.

Sometimes an author's second novel is a disappointment; not this one. Absolutely fantastic, great characters, keeps you gripped all the way through. The alternating chapters never lose pace from beginning to end. You feel empathy with several of the women involved in this horrendous corporate team building event. I eagerly await Jane Harper's next book.

Like many, I was anxious to get my hands on this, the next book in the Aaron Falk series. I loved The Dry and found Force of Nature a worthy successor. Was it as brilliant as the previous book? Only fractionally less so, I would say. Just by the smallest of margins. I found the handful of characters in the first book easier to keep straight. Here, the five women, and their associated children, issues and story lines, kept muddling me but that would be my lack of concentration, not the fault of the author. I liked the decidedly different story as it defined Force of Nature as a great standalone tale without relying on previous knowledge to give it legs.

The five women proved the best bit, for me, as they were very different characters. There were strong personalities at play and putting them in a stress situation brought out the angst and bitterness. Great fodder for a thriller! Classic whodunit with surprises aplenty. Aaron is Mr. Reliable and a doggedly persistent investigator. Is the fact that the story is Aussie-centric, making it feel so fresh, what makes it so good? I don't know but I love it and cannot get enough of this series and this author. Please, keep them coming!

I had previously read The Dry and thoroughly enjoyed it so I looked forward to this second novel by Jane Harper.
It was a good story set around the sort of corporate team building event I would dread. Tensions between the 4 women were slowly revealed, the disappearance of one of their number immediately set alarm bells ringing , especially regarding the history of previous crimes which was revealed. The two investigators had a wholly different agenda to the police but they manage to solve the crime and complete their own task.
This story , although involving the solving of a crime did not engage me quite the same as The Dry, which I enjoyed for its evocative descriptions of the landscape and people's struggles in the drought. The snow filled forest landscape somehow did not get me the same way.

Her debut The Dry was one of my standout books from last year as well as being a Sunday Times Bestseller, so I was very keen to read Jane Harper’s follow-up, Force of Nature, which is out today. Aaron Falk’s first case had taken him back to his childhood home and forced him to revisit a traumatic event from his past alongside the main case he stays in town to help investigate. I was interested to see where Jane Harper would take him next, and what the case would be: whether it would be as personal as his first. A missing hiker on a corporate retreat may not sound personal but it’s exactly that.

Force of Nature opens about six months after the events in The Dry took place. Despite that leaving him scarred, Federal Agent Aaron Falk is back at work in the federal investigation unit in Melbourne with his partner of three months, Carmen Cooper. The timing of Alice’s disappearance, together with a message Falk receives, compels them to visit the place where she disappeared: bushland that’s already been the scene of grisly events which captured the public’s imagination and could do without any further notoriety.

The story switches between Falk and Cooper’s questioning of Alice’s colleagues also on the retreat (against the background of the ongoing search for her) and the women’s retreat as it happened. This might frustrate readers who dislike flipping back and forth between two timelines but short chapters help ease the transitions, making them less noticeable. The structure’s ideal for any reader like me who wants to try and work out what happened, preferably before the detectives Falk and Cooper do.The reader has more information than the detectives investigating, not that this helps a great deal. Harper throws in enough false trails to keep you guessing throughout, the dynamic between the five women is in a state of flux despite some of their best efforts, and the witnesses appear sufficiently cagey or evasive to be unreliable. Who or what are they protecting with their witness accounts, and more importantly by what they withhold.

It’s fascinating to see how the women’s group starts off the hike, each with her own role, and how quickly their personalities rub up against each other and old grudges surface. I didn’t always feel as if I had enough of a handle on some of the characters in this book though, Lauren especially, and the men’s group on retreat served little purpose beyond facilitating a meeting at the first night’s camp, although it’s interesting to consider whether the book would have worked as well had the men’s group been the ones in trouble with the whistleblower among their number. Probably not.

Nature once again plays a huge role in Harper’s book, further compounding the women’s issues and problems. In The Dry, the characters’ were having to function in drought conditions; in Force of Nature, by contrast, they’re having to deal with being both cold and wet, and the oppression here comes from the bush and trees crowding in on them and the sense of being watched rather than the (literal and metaphorical) heat Falk faced in his homecoming novel, The Dry.

I’ve never been a fan but if ever there was a case against corporate retreats, this is it. But Force of Nature is about more than office politics unleashed in the wild; it’s about more complex formative relationships, those that endure, ones which can shape us or break us but either way will have a lasting impact. Force of Nature is about human nature as much as the more immediate nature the women lose themselves in, and is an interesting take on how we work and play together both in and out of the office and further back to our schooldays. Force of Nature shows us what happens when people go off course, when they’re lost and scared and takes them far from home. For Falk and the people he’s investigating, the question is can they find their way back. I enjoyed finding out over the two evenings I read this.

A corporate retreat is organized by a financial organization to encourage the bonding among colleagues. The two teams, five women and five men, will have to spend three days in the Australian bushland hiking and camping. But at the end of the three days, only the men have managed to turn up at the meeting point. After a few hours of waiting, four of the five women finally appear, scratched and injured, but one is still missing. Federal Agents Aaron Falk and Carmen Cooper of the Melbourne Financial Investigations Unit take part in the investigation because the missing woman, Alice Russell, was collecting information for them about the organization she works for which they suspected of financial fraud. Is Alice’s disappearance linked to the work she was doing for them? Or it has to do with the Australian setting, once the hunting ground of a serial killer?

I haven’t read Jane Harper’s first novel, The Dry, which first features Federal Agent Aaron Falk, but after reading FORCE OF NATURE, I plan to catch up. Aaron Falk is an interesting character, with a complicated past that still haunts him and to which he refers a few times throughout the novel: growing up in a farm and then leaving it for the big city, his difficult relationship with his father, and his intricate love life.

The narration alternates between the past and the present, between the first day of camping, the women’s struggle to survive in the wilderness and the events that lead to Alice’s disappearance, and the police’s investigation and their search for Alice.

One of the main theme of this novel is the relationship between parents and children and the lengths parents would go to protect their own children. This is also a provocative novel about families, old rivalries and jealousies, and bullying.

The detailed and rich descriptions transport the reader right into the Australian wilderness that look like the perfect setting of a horror movie. The author’s writing and the suspense running high through the pages make this an unputdownable and compelling novel!

The second book in Harper’s Aaron Falk series is just as good if not better than the first. Atmospheric and packed full of tension, this story of a corporate retreat gone wrong and a missing woman is absolutely riveting.

I was a little late in discovering just how good Harper’s first book The Dry was, it felt like everyone had read it but me, but as soon as I finished it I knew I needed more. It was just so atmospheric and I found main character Aaron Falk very likeable and someone I wanted to know more about.

For me the highlight of this book was yet again the setting and character development. Unlike The Dry however there are no high temperatures and no drought but rather a cold, wet and rugged landscape where five women set out on a corporate team building event which ends in disaster. As they lose their way (and their supplies) in this remote and isolated location, the bickering and disagreements on how best to find their way or get help begin and in the end only four of them make it out. It’s one of those classic survival stories, mixed with a missing person investigation and I absolutely loved it.

This has a slightly different format to previous book but the writing is just as good. In The Dry the author interspersed flashbacks to different time periods and events within the narrative (something I found a little jarring at times) to give an insight into the characters motivations and thoughts. In Force of Nature however Harper alternates between two separate timelines, the first following Falk as he investigates the disappearance of his key informant and the other following the five women on the retreat.

I have to say I preferred this format but I did find myself more gripped by the women’s story than Falk’s investigation. It felt like Aaron and his partner Carmen were pushed a little to the side particularly in the first half of the book where they’re getting everyone’s story but that may just have been because I was rushing through their sections to get back to the retreat.

The sections on the corporate retreat are told in more or less chronological order and I found it absolutely riveting to read the changing dynamics within the group as their situation goes from bad to worse. Watching their relationships and attitudes shift as they move from their corporate personas and roles to their more natural, and at times primitive, behavior was by far the highlight of this story. It does make you wonder how well you know your work colleagues and how you would react in that situation. Would you really pull together or would it be every man for himself? What would you do if you thought your life was on the line and someone in the group was risking it?

As it’s told from the points of view of each of the women you do get a real insight into their characters and motives but it still keeps you guessing as to what happened between them until the very end. Did Alice really set out alone and get lost or did she push the others in the group too far?

Added to that there is a mystery around a serial killer who previously operated in the area and Falk’s current investigation into the shady dealings of the company Alice works for. Could someone associated with the killer have taken up where he left off, could someone have found out Alice was informing on them? There are so many potential options for what could have happened to her and so many red herrings thrown in that it’s impossible to figure it out and I suspected everyone at one point or another.

Like the previous book this isn’t necessarily a fast paced story but it’s no less gripping as a result. Yet again Harper creates real tension and atmosphere in the story and while I would have liked a bit more time on Falk I very much enjoyed this book and can’t wait for the next one in the series

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC. As always all views are my own.

Force of Nature is about a group of work colleagues who go on a corporate retreat. Five women go hiking together, five women who don't necessarily get along and only four return.

Federal Agent Aaron Falk is in charge of finding out what really went on and what really happened on the retreat.

This was such a well-written story! The descriptions and the language used were so good that it made the story very real and believable and really pulled you into the story and the setting.

When I started this, I didn't realise that it was the second book in the Aaron Falk series, however, that didn't have any effect on my enjoyment of the book. I will definitely be checking out the first and next books in the series.

Author Jane Harper's debut, The Dry, was such a hit among readers last year that many of us have been eagerly anticipating this second book in the Aaron Falk series.  In fact, The Dry was a favourite on many 'books of 2017' lists and was mentioned several times as part of my #R3COMM3ND3D2017 feature.  I read and reviewed The Dry towards the end of 2017 and thoroughly enjoyed the desolate small-town feeling Harper conveys in her writing, along with the struggle to cope during a long and exhaustive drought.

I guess the question is, was it worth the wait?  Oh yes.  It was definitely worth the wait.  I would go as far as saying I preferred Force of Nature to The Dry marginally.  But then, I'm a sucker for survival stories.  I devour books where we humans are pushed to our limits in the most extreme of circumstances.

Having read both of Jane Harper's novels what stands out the most is how she excels at writing the landscape and setting of her tales.  In The Dry we had drought-struck Kiewarra.  In Force of Nature we have the Giralang Ranges with lots of wild, overgrown bushland ready and waiting to show you your worst nightmare!

Ten colleagues at BaileyTennants are pushed out of the comfort of the office and into the inhospitable and unforgiving wilderness.  Two teams up against each other; five men and five women.  The retreat, organised by professional outfit Executive Adventures is totally safe - after all, they've been doing this for years and haven't had any problems (well, no major problems anyway).  But when the group of women veer from the correct trail, they blunder further away from civilisation and closer to the hidden dangers of the bush.  Tensions fray, accidents happen and food and water supplies rapidly dwindle.  Then Alice goes missing.  What happened to Alice?  Has she made it back to base?  Is she safe?

I loved the suspense of this novel.  One of the best whodunnits I've read in a while.  I was highly suspicious of all the characters from start to finish and oh my gosh, I couldn't stop turning the pages!  Federal Agent Aaron Falk and colleague Carmen are aware of Alice before she becomes a missing person.  Without her employer's knowledge, Alice has been assisting Falk in investigating BaileyTennants by providing the much-needed hard evidence.  At least, as far as Falk was concerned business owners Daniel and Jill Bailey weren't aware of their employees double-cross.  But now with Alice missing, questions need to be asked.  The author has created so many red herrings and double bluffs that the outcome could be any one of several different options.  An incredibly well-written and dramatic piece of crime fiction.

Despite this book being part of the Aaron Falk series I personally felt the story wasn't really about Falk.  Yes, we do discover more about this intriguing character, more about his upbringing and his strained relationship with his father.  But for me, my focus whilst reading was entirely on this disparate group of five women.  They held my attention 100%.  I adored the flashback sequences where the reader gets to see the uncomfortable friction between the colleagues.  In fact, I think I preferred these sections to the chapters set during the search for Alice.  I didn't particularly like any of the women but I felt as though I was there, with them, tramping through the Australian bush.

Would I recommend this book?  Absolutely.  Force of Nature can easily be read as a standalone but why would you bother when you can also read the excellent The Dry.  I loved the desolation, the gradual loss of hope emanating from Harper's characters as they plunged deeper and deeper into unknown territory and the masterful way the suspense builds throughout the story.  Atmospheric, unsettling and gripping from start to finish.

Five out of five stars.

I chose to read and review an eARC of Force of Nature.  The above review is my own unbiased opinion.

"Alice brought this on herself."

I'm really excited to be a part of the Force of Nature blog tour. I've only recently read and reviewed the prequel to this book, The Dry, but I loved it and when I had the opportunity to review the sequel I jumped at the chance.

It might be sacrilege, but I think I might just like Force of Nature more than The Dry. Only a little bit. But with Force of Nature, even though it's set in the present, Australia, and in the wild, it had a feel of classic detective fiction, with the small group of suspects and, even though they're in the wilderness, it almost feels a little like a Christie house party murder.

It also has a classic feel in that it really scrutinises the characters of the four women who return and Harper explores the relationships between them. They're forced to spend time together in an unforgiving climate and it brings resentments and loyalties to the surface.

It's very much a 'what would I do in the situation' sort of book.

Yet, if you're thinking Force of Nature is old fashioned, it's not. It has the best elements of classic crime fiction but it's a very modern. The characters and their situation, especially the work issues, are very current.

Like The Dry the environment plays a huge part in the story, with the unforgiving landscape giving them a deadline to find the missing Alice. It gives the story an edge, but it's not a breathless book, it ticks along nicely, slowly growing the tension and pressure.

I did guess a couple of plot points, some of which I felt were a little obvious, but there was enough intrigue in the book to keep me reading.

I think Jane Harper has tackled the difficult second book really well and I'm excited to read what she writes next.

My Rating: 4 Stars

I received a copy of Force of Nature, via NetGalley, in return for an honest review. My thanks to the publisher (especially Kimberley Nyamhondera) and the author.

Last year I read The Dry by Jane Harper and I absolutely adored it, it was clever, human and utterly compelling. When I found that she had written a second novel, Force of Nature I knew that I had to read it. I had fallen in love with her writing, her sense of place and her characterisation of Aaron Falk. There is always a worry that a second novel will not live up to expectations but I didn’t have to worry as Force of Nature is just as exceptional as its predecessor.

We are thrown straight into the action with a wonderful opening chapter filled with atmosphere, dread and tension which really sets the scene for a gripping and compelling novel. Nobody creates characters, a general sense of unease and plots quite like Jane Harper. I became so involved in the book that I ended up devouring Force of Nature in one sitting on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Whilst The Dry was set in the extreme heat of a heat wave and drought, Force of Nature is located deep in the Australian bush at the Giralong Ranges. There is a constant drizzle, the terrain is hostile and it is infamous for it being the location of a number of abductions and murders of women 20 years earlier. The bush is the location for a weekend team building exercise for business BaileyTennants. Split into a male and female team, armed only with a map and compass they have to find their way through the bush and to a final meeting point on Sunday afternoon. The men arrive back safely but the women are severely delayed, and when they do finally arrive, one of them, Alice, is missing. Federal Agent Aaron Falk and his partner Carmen know Alice – she is a whistleblower and is helping to bring charges against BaileyTennants for fraud. The last call she made on her mobile was to Falk, leaving a ghostly voicemail where the words, ‘hurt her’ could be heard.

Force of Nature is a masterpiece in storytelling and plotting, I had no idea what happened, why it had happened or who the culprit was and so the resolution was a satisfying surprise. This is a book where the plot slowly unfurls, clever flashbacks allow us to be voyeurs of the women as we follow them over the weekend. The weather combined with the conflicting personalities and hostile relationships create a pressure cooker building between the women as they wandered further and further off course.

Jane Harper excels in writing relationships, whilst The Dry examined a society on its knees from drought, broken families and friendships, Force of Nature shines a light on the complexities of female friendships. The rivalries, subtle nuances and the sly underhand digs wrapped in a smile are wonderfully portrayed and add tension to an already tense and suspensful situation.

Whilst this is the second book in the Aaron Falk series it can be read as a standalone novel, however, I would recommend reading The Dry first as there are some references to previous events and to understand Aaron Falk’s psyche. I have a huge soft spot for Aaron and this book sees a very different man to the one we met in The Dry and we can see how the events that took place have affected him. I look forward to meeting Aaron again.

Thank you to NetGalley and the lovely people at Little Brown UK for letting me read an advanced copy of Force of Nature. Jane Harper’s debut mystery novel The Dry was one of the books chosen for my postal book group on Litsy. It was an atmospheric mystery-thriller with a beautifully evocative setting and one of the best debut novels I’ve ever read. It seemed a huge task to expect her next novel to live up to my expectations but I think it was actually even better. The prologue perfectly sets the scene and atmosphere of the novel, confirming my love of the author’s sophisticated writing style.

The premise of this story is refreshingly simple – five women go out hiking but only four return. The narrative switches between the past and the present. It jumps backwards in time slowly revealing what happened during the three-day hiking trip then returns to the fallout in the present. It’s skilfully handled and well-plotted with only snippets of information being leaked at a time and woven into the unfolding events of the present. The descriptions of the fictional Giralang Ranges are immersive and beautiful. Where The Dry focused on the searing heat of an Australian drought, Force of Nature captures the almost mythical tale of being lost in isolated bushland. I’m already looking forward to the setting of the next book.

The creepy atmosphere is heightened when the women stumble across a cabin linked to notorious serial killer Martin Kovac. Are the women truly alone? The tension between the women escalates as food and water run out. The descent into almost feral arguments and the increasing suspicion among the women combine to evoke an atmosphere of doubt and blame. What secrets are they each trying to conceal from the detectives and each other? Aaron Falk is quite a detached character but the author even manages to explore his backstory a little more with the help of his partner Carmen. Hopefully they both return for the next mystery. Force of Nature was a well-plotted and sophisticated story that read like the work of a more experienced writer. Jane Harper’s phenomenal talent means I’m a devoted fan and she’s now an auto-buy author for me.

Jane Harper stormed onto the contemporary crime scene last year with The Dry with the mystery of what happened to the Hadler family one of my top reads of last year.  Force of Nature, the follow-up featuring the return of Detective Aaron Falk, has therefore a fairly hefty weight of expectation.  By title alone, it is clear that Harper is determined to go 'big' with this installment and to prove herself to be more than a one-hit wonder.  We have a missing woman, an unforgiving landscape, the whispers of possible serial killer involvement and a cast of characters with secrets to keep.  Five went out.  Only four have come back.

We catch up with Aaron Falk back in his flat in Melbourne and back in the office in the Financial Investigations Unit.  With an opening adventure like The Dry which took Falk out of his comfort zone and back to his hometown to Kiewarra, the challenge for Harper is to prove that even when just doing his day job, Aaron Falk can still have a plausibly exciting life.  She clearly does not wish to over-rely on her debut, so we are told that Falk's burns are healing nicely, he has a new car after his old one was deluged with manure and Kiewarra remains for the most part out of sight, but one suspects it is not completely out of mind.

The case here is around what has become of Alice Russell.  She was due to provide Falk and his partner Carmen with the crucial whistleblowing evidence that would bring down an accountancy firm suspected of decades-long money-laundering, but she has abruptly vanished on a corporate retreat.  To add further complications, she placed a missed call to Aaron's phone in the wee small hours just before she was reported missing.  Where is she?  Did her involvement with the investigation put her in danger?  Under pressure from their superiors to find the evidence which Alice's disappearance has rendered more complicated, Aaron and Carmen head out to try and find what has become of Alice.

The retreat set out with ten people from the firm, a men's group who arrived back 'a respectable thirty-five minutes ahead of the midday target' but as the women's party failed to reappear, smugness gave way to concern.  This is a retreat which they have participated in for several years run by the same highly respectable company.  Surely nothing can have gone wrong.  But then four women stumble back, two of them supporting a third and the fourth with blood over her forehead.  It is a few minutes before any of them ask if Alice had made it back safe.  Snaking in and out of the search for Alice are flashbacks from the group's ill-fated expedition, starting with that very morning when the four picked themselves up to try and find help, agreeing among themselves that 'Alice brought this on herself'.

Force of Nature is set in the fictional Giralang Ranges, famous to Falk for its reputation as former hunting ground of a well-known serial killer.  While 'they found most of the bodies eventually', the cabin he used for his crimes was never located and there is the slight risk that the killer's son just may still be operational in the area.  As the flashbacks of the women's group progress, an additional shudder runs through the reader when they find a cabin which appears to offer much-needed shelter but which does have a horribly stained mattress in the corner.  The Bush's power to haunt is conjured up vividly here - Alice has vanished into nowhere in a manner worthy of Joan Lindsay's Picnic on Hanging Rock.

This is in essence a locked room mystery.  There is no phone reception - leading to a hovering question mark as to how and why Alice contacted Falk on the morning of her disappearance - and the main suspects are those within her party.  There's Jill, daughter of the firm's founder and forced into complicity with their doings, then Lauren, who has problems at home and is struggling with her job.  The twins Bree and Beth make up the rest of the group - less close than their employers had assumed, Bree is the high-flier who is less than impressed that her overweight sibling who is on probation got a job on her turf.  Add in Alice who even Falk and Carmen acknowledge to be difficult and we have a tinderbox ready to explode.  Of course, the twist is that these women are not locked in a room as their tempers fray.  They are in the wide open Bush with acres of sky before them, and yet they are trapped.

In and among all of this, there are other plotlines competing for our attention.  Falk examines his father's maps to look for more clues about trails within the Giralang Ranges, still trying to understand the old man better after the revelations within the last book.  Back in Melbourne, there's underage sexting, anorexia and a variety of other teenage problems bubbling beneath the surface.  We also get to see Falk's sparsely furnished flat, with Carmen casting a critical eye over what she feels needs to change if Falk hopes to ever attract any female companionship.  There is real potential for an interesting partnership between these two, provided that it doesn't spill over into romantic tension with Carmen's imminent marriage.  Harper has a real gift for description which summons up an incredibly powerful sense of place - whether it is noting the incredibly old sofa in the centre near the ranges, or the fact that Aaron's flat has a magazine rack but no armchairs, with both of Harper's books, I have felt able to see where she was trying to put her characters.

Force of Nature packs the same punch as its predecessor, proving Harper's success was far more than a flash in the pan.  As before, she kept me genuinely guessing as to what Alice's possible fate might have been and when the reveal came, I was truly stunned.  Force of Nature depicts the power and potential menace of the Australian wilderness - for all that it is a beautiful country, this truly is where the wild things are.  With whispers of a return to Kiewarra in the finale, I cannot wait to see where Falk goes next.