Book Review: Force of Nature by Jane Harper (Aaron Falk #2)

 

My Rating: 3.5⭐

A corporate team building retreat in the Giralang Ranges ends with one of the hikers of a group of ten (teams divided into one of five women and another of five men) missing. None of the other hikers seem to know what happened to Alice Russell.

Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk and his colleague Carmen Cooper had been involved in an investigation of Alice’s employer Bailey Tennants for financial fraud. Alice had been their contact person who had yet to provide them with the “contracts” that would implicate her employees. Aaron had received a missed call from Alice while she was on her hike with a barely intelligible voicemail that compounds Aron’s suspicions that there was more to her disappearance than Alice simply losing her way and getting separated from her group.

Over twenty years ago, the Giralang wilderness was hunting grounds for a serial killer who had since been caught and incarcerated. Could there be a copycat? Does Alice’s disappearance have anything to do with Aaron’s case? Could this be a case of professional rivalry among coworkers or was it more personal?

Jane Harper’s Force of Nature is well-written, atmospheric, and suspenseful. The narrative is presented in dual timelines switching between the past and the present. The present timeline following the investigation into Alice’s disappearance. The past timeline not only gives us a glimpse into the events that occurred during the hiking trip and the interactions between the coworkers as is shared through multiple perspectives. The past timeline also gives us insight into the underlying tensions between the members of the group. There is a lot to unpack there. The pace does falter as we move between the timelines but I did enjoy the investigative aspect and wish more of the narrative was devoted to that part of the story. The author does a brilliant job of setting the atmosphere for this novel. The vivid description of the Giralang Ranges and the terrain made for an atmospheric read.

While I didn’t enjoy this book as much as The Dry , the first in the series, I did find it to be a decent read. I look forward to reading the third book in Jane Harper’s Aaron Falk series.