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A review by veronica87
Force of Nature by Jane Harper
4.0
"It wasn’t any one thing that went wrong; it was a hundred little things. It all kept adding up until it was too late."
Five women head into the Giralang Ranges in Australia as part of a corporate retreat, but only four come out. Thus begins the second book in the Aaron Falk series. I thoroughly enjoyed the first book, The Dry, when I read it a few months ago and I found this book to be a solid sophomore attempt.
It’s been six months since Falk’s hometown adventures in [b:The Dry|27824826|The Dry (Aaron Falk, #1)|Jane Harper|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1456113132s/27824826.jpg|47804789]. He’s back in Melbourne and working on a money laundering case with Agent Carmen Cooper, his temporary partner. When their informant, a woman named Alice who works in a management position in the company they’re investigating, goes missing while on a company retreat it raises the question: does her disappearance have anything to do with the money laundering investigation? As Falk and Carmen head out to the Giralang Range to try and trace the steps of Alice’s last known days, readers are made privy to them via sequentially ordered flashbacks. It’s a masterful examination of how quickly the loss of civilization- and all its attendant comforts - can affect the human psyche.
Like its predecessor, this book is not a thrill-inducing page turner. It’s sedately paced but engrossing nonetheless. It delivers an almost tangible sense of the Australian wilderness and may have put this city slicker off of hiking and camping for the foreseeable future. The story easily drew me in and kept me in its quietly maintained thrall from the very first sentence until the last. Falk’s personal observations about life with his now deceased father was also nicely interwoven with the larger story without ever becoming a distraction. I really liked Carmen as Falk’s partner. She was a nice sounding board for him and an overall positive influence. I don’t know if she’ll be back for more books but the story was more or less written for her not to be so, we’ll see. In any event, I plan to be back for more Aaron Falk books.
Five women head into the Giralang Ranges in Australia as part of a corporate retreat, but only four come out. Thus begins the second book in the Aaron Falk series. I thoroughly enjoyed the first book, The Dry, when I read it a few months ago and I found this book to be a solid sophomore attempt.
It’s been six months since Falk’s hometown adventures in [b:The Dry|27824826|The Dry (Aaron Falk, #1)|Jane Harper|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1456113132s/27824826.jpg|47804789]. He’s back in Melbourne and working on a money laundering case with Agent Carmen Cooper, his temporary partner. When their informant, a woman named Alice who works in a management position in the company they’re investigating, goes missing while on a company retreat it raises the question: does her disappearance have anything to do with the money laundering investigation? As Falk and Carmen head out to the Giralang Range to try and trace the steps of Alice’s last known days, readers are made privy to them via sequentially ordered flashbacks. It’s a masterful examination of how quickly the loss of civilization- and all its attendant comforts - can affect the human psyche.
Like its predecessor, this book is not a thrill-inducing page turner. It’s sedately paced but engrossing nonetheless. It delivers an almost tangible sense of the Australian wilderness and may have put this city slicker off of hiking and camping for the foreseeable future. The story easily drew me in and kept me in its quietly maintained thrall from the very first sentence until the last. Falk’s personal observations about life with his now deceased father was also nicely interwoven with the larger story without ever becoming a distraction. I really liked Carmen as Falk’s partner. She was a nice sounding board for him and an overall positive influence. I don’t know if she’ll be back for more books but the story was more or less written for her not to be so, we’ll see. In any event, I plan to be back for more Aaron Falk books.