Force of Nature
Aaron Falk, Book 2
Failed to add items
Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.
Add to basket failed.
Please try again later
Add to wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Remove from wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Adding to library failed
Please try again
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 Months Free + £10 Audible voucher
£5.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Offer ends on 5 July 2026 at 11:59 BST.
Force of Nature
Narrated by:
Stephen Shanahan
Buy Now for £14.35
-
Narrated by:
-
Stephen Shanahan
-
By:
-
Jane Harper
The gripping new novel from the author of the Sunday Times top ten bestseller, Waterstones Thriller of the Month and Sunday Times Crime Book of the Year, The Dry.
FIVE WENT OUT. FOUR CAME BACK...
Is Alice here? Did she make it? Is she safe? In the chaos, in the night, it was impossible to say which of the four had asked after Alice's welfare. Later, when everything got worse, each would insist it had been them.
Five women reluctantly pick up their backpacks and start walking along the muddy track. Only four come out the other side.
The hike through the rugged landscape is meant to take the office colleagues out of their air-conditioned comfort zone and teach resilience and team building. At least that is what the corporate retreat website advertises.
Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk has a particularly keen interest in the whereabouts of the missing bushwalker. Alice Russell is the whistleblower in his latest case - and Alice knew secrets. About the company she worked for and the people she worked with.
Far from the hike encouraging teamwork, the women tell Falk a tale of suspicion, violence and disintegrating trust. And as he delves into the disappearance, it seems some dangers may run far deeper than anyone knew.©2017 Jane Harper
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
Continue the series
Critic reviews
Jane Harper, the new Queen of Crime...Even more impressive than The Dry...Harper makes it look easy but she has to pace two narratives without giving too much away, creating an almost unbearable level of suspense...Nature is a hostile, unpredictable force in both of Harper's novels, but her brilliance lies in making it into a test of horribly fallible human nature
Once again Harper leaves you gagging to know who did what. Once again there are plenty of suspects
With consummate skill, Harper alternates between Falk's investigation and an account of what happened to the five women on their hike, as they rapidly find that the natural world is out to get them and their relations with each other deteriorate . . . Harper has a fine gift for making her readers comfortable in inhospitable territory - psychological as well as physical (Jake Kerridge)
'The most exciting emerging novelist of the last 12 months...As gripping, atmospheric and ingeniously plotted as The Dry, it places Harper in the elevated company of the authors she most admires: Val McDermid, Gillian Flynn and Lee Child
Powerful, intriguing and recommended...Harper is wonderful at evoking fear and unease, and she draws a mesmeric picture of the terrifying Australian terrain
Jane Harper brings a potent outsider's eye once again to the uncanniness of the Australian bush . . . Like The Dry, this is a deftly assembled and cleverly paced novel, the characters skillfully and nimbly drawn . . . It's stirring to see a writer racing out of the traps with such confidence and storytelling flair. (Alasdair Lees)
Jane Harper is more from the Patricia Highsmith and Donna Tartt school of mystery: elegant, intelligent and not for the faint-hearted...As chapters swap between the tense outward-bound weekend (where self-hatred, fear and resentment jostle for position) and its subsequent investigation, Harper creates a claustrophobic page-turner that conjures up that other great Australian mystery, Joan Lindsay's Picnic At Hanging Rock
Five women head out on a camping trip, but only four emerge, bruised and traumatised. What follows is a clever twist on a locked-room mystery, set in a forest as alien and hostile as anything in a fairy tale
This irresistible thriller is a perfect summer read - and a warning against bonding weekends with colleagues you don't like . . .
Not as good as 'The Dry', which is more nuanced, has tighter writing and does not go on for two hours longer than necessary.
Good not Great
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Compared to The Dry it felt like a shorter, less dense read, but was equally engaging. The different plot threads are woven together delicately within the context of searching for a woman who has gone missing in the wilderness while on a team-bonding expedition: the tension between the protagonists’ public personas and private selves creates drama within the narrative. There are also interesting layers to the storytelling: a police investigation, corporate politics, teenage angst, familial duty.
A very evocative read
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Refreshing and clever
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Too many subplots.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The tale alternates between the trekkers and the searchers - then and now, a format that I did not feel worked well. The narrator was good and there was enough of a hook to keep me listening but not gripped to the end.
Sadly I did not feel this second book was as good as Miss Harper’s “The Dry”.
Four days out back
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.