Force of Nature cover art

Force of Nature

Aaron Falk, Book 2

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 Months Free + £10 Audible voucher

£5.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Get this deal
Offer ends on 5 July 2026 at 11:59 BST.
More purchase options

Force of Nature

By: Jane Harper
Narrated by: Stephen Shanahan
Get this deal

£5.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends on 5 July 2026 at 11:59 BST. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £14.35

Buy Now for £14.35

'THE NEW QUEEN OF CRIME' Sunday Times

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 Psychological Suspense Thriller & Suspense Women's Fiction Exciting
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1

Continue the series
Exiles cover art
Exiles By: Jane Harper

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 . . .
All stars
Most relevant
After the extremely highly rated The Dry Jane Harper's follow-up is more of a gentle push of nature than a genuine force. Harper does write well but this is a tried and trusted plot albeit with some neat contemporary twists. It does develop slowly though and this slow pace is not improved by the narration. Stephen Shanahan's accent does of course add authenticity and he actually carries the narrative very well. However a voice actor he is not and it wasn't even always possible to tell a female character from a male. Given that the majority of the characters are indeed women this is a serious disadvantage. It's not often I say this but I might have enjoyed this a little more as a physical rather than audio book. So a decent enough story coupled with narration that could have been improved on.

More a Gentle Push of Nature

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is Jane Harpers's follow-up to her very successful novel The Dry (reviewed here by me last year).

Five female colleagues are on a break from the office on a bonding team-and-resilience-building hike in the wilds of the Guralong Ranges near Melbourne. But it has all gone terrifyingly wrong: they're lost. There's no signal on the mobile and the single torch has a fading battery. We know only four of the women will return.

Harper is excellent on the mounting vitriol between the women the reasons for which are explored in the alternating chapters as the narrative flips between present and past, notching up tension and suspense as well as explaining the resentment concerning Lauren and Alice's children, and Beth's past as an addict. After an explosion of violence, Alice goes missing just where a hiker had been murdered years before...

It's a great listen - Harper creates the forbidding and dangerous Australian terrain brilliantly and suspense is taut. There's another strand to the story involving Alice as the whistle-blower in the business the women work for. It is not very convincing and merely distracts. The whole would have been more powerful without it.

The great narration accentuates the rough toughness of the story.

Alice is missing!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
As a fan of Jane Harper's debut novel The Dry, this definitely felt like a sub-par sequel. Detective Aaron Falks returns with another case in the Australian wilderness, this time following the disappearance of a woman who went on a work retreat in the outback but never came back.

Four of the women who went with her all have motives to want to see her gone, so Falks attempts to understand what secrets she may have had about them.

The story, as described, felt underwhelming even though I appreciate the straightforward simplicity of Harper's writing. There is no massive conspiracy similar to the first but it may have lacked too much in this instance.

Slow burner, slightly disappointing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Another superb novel from Jane Harper, even better than the previous one ‘The Dry’. Great plot, lots of twists, lots of intrigue, well written and well read. Again, her use of setting is key to the story and so well evoked. All the characters are well drawn and the dialogue spot on. I hope there will be more.

Gripping

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
After reading The Dry which had me captivated I have to be honest and while this was a good book - it just wasn't in the same league. I think it suffered from the lack of interaction with the lead characters past life. That all being said I still intend to listen / read to any future books by Jane Harper.

An Enjoyable Read - However .......

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews