Author: Jane Harper
ISBN: 978-1-74354-909-4
RRP: $32.99
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Copy: Courtesy of Publisher
Last year Jane Harper released her riveting debut suspense novel The Dry, which we read for book club and I loved. Since reading The Dry I have been eagerly awaiting the next book, which finally released last week.
A hugely popular debut novel sets extremely high sophomore story expectations, expecting that authors are just going to get better. This can leave that sophomore release falling a little flat but that is definitely not the case with Force of Nature. Harper’s sophomore novel is as strong as her debut and has helped cement her in my list of must watch Australian authors.
Force of Nature is the second book about Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk, and I hope not the last. It is a book that references events of The Dry a couple of times throughout but I don’t think it’s something that will affect enjoyment if you haven’t read the first book. I have read lots of books in between so my memory of the first book isn’t clear, but I know I loved it, so it wasn’t detrimental to my enjoyment of this one.
The Prologue places us somewhere in the middle of the story, we need to go back to discover how events unfolded before following through to the resolution.
Harper creates captivating suspense that leaves you wandering down overgrown and barely there trails of information trying to piece together the clues and work out what happened to Alice.
Two groups of staff from Bailey/Tennants boutique accountancy firm head to the Giralang Ranges for an outdoor adventure team building exercise; three days following the trails in the ranges after only a single afternoon of training for one member of each team. Two teams of five people head into the ranges; five men and five women. Each team has one member of the Bailey family, namesakes of the business.
The men’s team play quite a small part in the story. We know they are also navigating the trails but after they all set off you don’t hear much from them, we know they made it back to the meeting point on time. One of the men on the team is company chief executive Daniel Bailey, and on the women’s team is chairwoman Jill Bailey.
Five women set out on the path at Mirror Falls with a map and a compass and all they need to get them through the next three days. They are carrying the first nights food but the food for the following days is already at the campsites for the second and third nights. They are due back at the rendezvous point Sunday lunchtime to meet up with the men and bus it back to Melbourne. Sunday comes and the end of the trail is watched, to no avail. Hours late the women emerge from the bush, far from the end of the trail, battered and bloody and missing one of their group.
The search begins in earnest and ramps up rapidly, those conditions aren’t great if you’re unprepared and the weather’s been stormy. It isn’t long before a full scale search is in progress but no-one really expects the Federal Police to be involved.
The missing woman is Alice Russell, who has been working closely with Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk and his partner Carmen Cooper. They are very interested in the progress of the search because she is an integral part of their current investigation, centring on the company she works for.
The story is that of Alice’s disappearance; how, where and why the biggest questions. It takes the entire story but we eventually get those answers. But I am still left with questions; some things I didn’t get answered. Parts of the setup that were vital in the way it came together were then never revisited to let us know how they came to be. It’s a relatively minor thing but even now, days after finishing the book, I’m trying to work out how some things fit into the timeline.
In the beginning it all seems pretty straightforward, place all the pieces together and the picture comes clear. Except that’s not really the way Harper writes, and it doesn’t make for gripping reading when it’s that predictable. So to add avenues we need to throw in historical murders in the Ranges, and the possibility of a teen social media sex scandal.
All of the elements came together seamlessly to stitch a story that had me gripped, and left me completely unsure of what theories I wanted to put my money on. I’m not sure whether there was any factual basis to the historical murders but I was born and bred in the Eastern states so I remember the Belanglo State Forest murders, and that’s what this left me thinking of.
Overall Harper has written a captivating tale across a fluid timeline, that spans a short period of time but switches between the time on the trail and what’s happening in terms of the search when Alice doesn’t make it back.
In alternating chapters we follow the progress, ill-fated though it may be, of the women on their trek as the hike that is meant to help them work together and build resilience does more to make the tensions stronger, and the search efforts and information gathering of the police at the base station.
The writing is tight, the suspense is taut, the relationships are slippery to focus and the characters are complex. The story is one that captivated start to finish and left me wanting to see more of FPA Aaron Falk.
Jane Harper can be found on her Website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Force of Nature is book #42 for the Australian Women Writer’s Challenge 2017.
Thanks to Pan MacMillan 10 of our Beauty and Lace club members will be reading and reviewing Force of Nature so please be aware there may be spoilers in the comments.
Force of Nature is available now through Pan MacMillan, Booktopia, Angus & Robertson Bookworld and where all good books are sold.
I devour books, vampires and supernatural creatures are my genre of choice but over the past couple of years, I have broadened my horizons considerably. In a nutshell – I love to write! I love interacting with a diverse range of artists to bring you interviews. Perhaps we were perfect before – I LOVE WORDS!
Wow…wow…wow…what a way to be introduced to a new Author I’ve not read before. Thanks Beauty & Lace for allowing me to be one of the lucky reviewers of this book “Force of Nature’ by Jane Harper.
I took a week and a half to read this book…but I also had a 4 day Migraine in there, so I would’ve been finished even quicker if not for that. From the very first page I was hooked…I was surprised by just how easy it s to read Jane Harper’s writing, her storylines and sentences and wording, everything just flows, there’s no jerkiness or no areas throughout the entire story where I lost interest.
The story is set around a character called Alice Russell who goes missing after a week-long orienteering-like exercise in the Giralang Ranges goes horribly wrong. It was supposed to be a team building exercise. Alice is already on the Federal Police’s radar, as they are currently using her as a whistle blower for their investigation into illegal practices that have been going on at the company, BaileyTennant.
The hunt begins to try find Alice as the two Federal Police that are in charge of the investigation, Falk and Carmen begin their own journey of unravelling new twists and turns that crop up along the way, as well as coming to terms with past events in their own lives.
Jane made me feel like I was out there in the Ranges, cold & wet, with cold steam coming from my breath, feeling miserable and lost. I loved every character along the way that I was introduced to, each and every person had their own interesting story to share. I had quite a number of guesses going through the book as to what had happened to Alice and although the end wasn’t that surprising to me, I still enjoyed the whole story and the build-up to the end.
My daughter has already taken the book to read for herself and I have already picked up The Dry, so I can read, although from reading a name that’s mentioned at the end of Force of Nature, I think The Dry may have been the book I should’ve read first…oh well…
Definitely recommend this to everyone.
Force of Nature is the second book in the Aaron Falk series by Jane Harper. I had read The Dry a couple of months ago and was keen to see how the follow up would be.
I was pleasantly surprised that Jane was able to follow up strongly. Force of Nature follows a group of people on a corporate wilderness retreat when one person goes missing. Enter Aaron Falk who becomes involved due to a working relationship he had with the missing person.
Jane Harper provides readers with more details about Aaron Falk’s background and the manner in which she writes is descriptive enough that you get a sense of the environments and characters but not so descriptive that it becomes tedious to read. As with The Dry, the story left the reader wanting to find out “whodunnit”.
Swapping between the current investigation and the experiences of the women on each day of the retreat was a little tricky to get your head around but I was able to get into the groove of the book easily.
Recommend this book to anyone who enjoys an Australian story and mystery/ police stories.
Force of Nature is the second book in the Aaron Falk Australian based financial crime federal agent series. The story takes us on a corporate retreat where five women are on a team building bushwalk and one of their members goes missing.
Liker Jane Harper’s first novel in the series, the Dry, it is based in another iconic Australian setting, the dense bushland, just like the Dry, the writing so good, the reader instantly feels themselves tagging along in the background of the women’s bushwalk.
Harper builds suspense by writing in both in the present and the past, focusing on the search being conducted by the police and Falk and focusing on the women and how a lot of unfortunate incidents led them to losing one of their members. The dynamic between the middle class corporate women feels much on par with Big Little Lies.
Harper’s main underlying theme is bullying, it rearing its ugly head throughout the bushwalk as well as in the women’s histories and children’s lives. The book shows us how deeply this affects us and how far these impacts go, as well as showing us throughout the story, the family we have will go to great lengths to protect the ones we love.
The book was an easy summer read that gives us a deeper look into another Australian subculture and I look forward to more books in the Falk series by Harper.
I read The Dry last year and it was amazing.. and i have been eagerly awaiting her next book. After. It was great to find out that Aaron Falk would be making a return and this time with a female detective as well.. I really enjoyed how the author wrote this storyline, back and forth in each chapter, building the suspense.. . between Falk’s investigation and the ladies lost in the forest… really exciting ,,I think I liked The Dry just a little more than this one, however this was an excellent read and I was so happy to be part of this trial. Thank you xo
Even though this is the #2 book in the Aron Falk series, it’s a great stand alone read.
I loved Harper’s great description of the Giralang Ranges that I felt I was trekking along with the cast.
The story unfolding through alternating timelines was easy to follow so often in novels is confusing.
The underlying “bullying” in the novel goes to prove no matter your age or position bullying is something you can suffer from.
Really enjoyed this book and it was worth waiting for with the address mix ups
Now I need to go hunt out Jane’s first novel The Dry