Force of Nature by Jane Harper

Publisher's Synopsis

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?

My Review of Force of Nature by Jane Harper

The second thriller to feature Aaron Falk (The Dry) places us in the Victorian bush where an accounting firm’s team building exercise is about to go horribly wrong. Five women from the firm head into the bush but only four make it out, and they’re all a little worse for wear for the experience. This is a suspense story that has multiple layers of intrigue piled upon itself to provide a finely wrought mystery that represents a solid follow-up to the successful first novel, The Dry.

Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk has become involved because Alice Russell, the missing woman, has been secretly working with him, passing on damning evidence against the company. Could her disappearance be a coincidence or has her cover been blown?

This is a smoothly flowing story, helped along by Harper’s ability to effortlessly switch from the present and the resulting investigation back to the past and the way in which the women became lost. Through this narrative style, we’re given small pieces of information at a time, leading us to draw our own conclusions as to what actually happened. 

When we’re taken back in time to the start of the trek, we immediately get a good appreciation of the dynamics within the 5 women. There is a clear pecking order at play here. This is hardly surprising given the group is comprised of the part-owner of the company, a couple of upper management types and a couple of worker bees. There’s a built-in underlying tension that is constantly compounded by the pressures of being placed in a hostile environment with a constant risk of becoming lost or being hit with outside environmental challenges.

In short, we’re immediately being challenged to figure out exactly what happens to Alice right from the start. Did she go missing by accident or was it on purpose?

Switching to the present day narrative and we’re at the end of the fire trail where a search and rescue party is being organised to look for Alice. The 4 remaining women are safe and well and recovering from their ordeal. Falk and his partner Carmen have joined the police, not really revealing their reason for being there but using their Federal Police credentials to start interviewing the women and running their own investigation.

Although the main focus of Falk is to locate and secure sensitive company documents that will help put away the owners of the company the women work for, he can’t help but conduct a thorough investigation into Alice’s disappearance. After all, he’s feeling a little guilty that her disappearance may have something to do with her being his inside source at the company.

Through this investigation we begin to get a clearer picture of each of the women, the skeletons in their closets and potential reasons why Alice might have met with foul play.

A company hiding illegal operations, drug and alcohol abuse, teenage online bullying and, of course, workplace bullying are all put under the spotlight here. There’s a lot of baggage to unpack, some of it may be related to what happens in the bush but all of it involves real world problems that each of the women have to deal with.

Although it’s billed as an Aaron Falk novel, his role is not nearly as prominent as the one he plays in The Dry. Significantly, though, we get to see him working side by side with his Federal Police partner Carmen and, funnily enough, this gives us an even greater hint that he’s a loner. But he’s proving to also be an insightful investigator.

Force of Nature is a multi-faceted suspense novel that casts a wide net, deals with numerous social issues and offers a solid mystery. I didn’t let the fact that the ole team building exercise thing (ugh!) brought back all sorts of bad memories get in the way of my enjoyment of the book at all.