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Force of Nature: A Novel
Force of Nature: A Novel
Force of Nature: A Novel
Audiobook9 hours

Force of Nature: A Novel

Written by Jane Harper

Narrated by Stephen Shanahan

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

About this audiobook

"Narrator Stephen Shanahan...makes it sizzle to the very end. Both story and narrator are not to be missed." — AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner

From Jane Harper, New York Times bestselling author of The Dry, comes a riveting new audiobook featuring Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk.

Five women go on a hike. Only four return. Force of Nature begs the question: How well do you really know the people you work with?

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?

Praise for Force of Nature:

"All the novel's characters have been drawn with exceptional complexity, and none more so than Aaron Falk...So much more than a conventional detective, the reflective and compassionate Falk provides the book's moral compass." — New York Times Book Review

"Harper yet again delivers a very satisfying mystery from beginning to end, perfect to curl up with...Stephen Shanahan does an excellent narration with his calm, deep, Australian accented voice." — BookRiot

Force of Nature bristles with wit; it crackles with suspense; it radiates atmosphere. An astonishing book from an astonishing writer.” — A.J. Finn, author of The Woman in the Window

"Set against the fascinating backdrop of a wild, rural location in south Australia, Harper's sequel to her acclaimed Ned Kelly Award-winning debut, The Dry, presents an intriguing crime that might not actually exist and potential suspects with realistically complex and possible motives." — Library Journal

LanguageEnglish
Release dateFeb 6, 2018
ISBN9781427293145
Author

Jane Harper

Jane Harper is the author of four internationally bestselling Australian mysteries, including The Dry. Her books are published in 40 territories and have sold more than 3 million copies worldwide. Jane has won numerous top awards including the CWA Gold Dagger, the British Book Awards Crime and Thriller Book of the Year and the Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year. The 2021 movie adaptation of The Dry, starring Eric Bana, is one of the highest grossing Australian films of all time. Jane worked as a print journalist for 13 years in both Australia and the UK, and now lives in Melbourne with her husband, daughter and son.

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Reviews for Force of Nature

Rating: 3.7859825971214014 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I gave it a 4 star as I liked the mystery and what happened-- I was disappointed as I would have liked more character development of Falk -- I felt it fell flat in this book. I too found the majority of characters underwhelming.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Five professional women go all “Lord of the Flies” on a corporate survival retreat - fun reading, right? Actually it was. I really like Jane Harper’s style.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is the 2nd book in the Aaron Falk series. Aaron Falk is a Financial Crimes Federal Police Officer who is investigating the Bailey Family Corporation for fraud. Carmen Cooper is his cohort in this book as his partner, Greg Raco, is convalescing from Harper's last book, The Dry. The corporation is holding a weekend corporate retreat for team building which consists of a hike in the wilderness in Australia. Five men and five woman are in two separate teams. The story focuses mainly on the five women whose personalities clash during the whole hiking experience. Only four women return in the end and the question remains, "What happened to Alice?" I found Jane Harper to be a very talented storyteller and she uses two different timelines in order to set down her well-paced plot. I found all the characters to be very interesting and well-developed. I was happy to find out more background information on Falk and look forward to reading more about him in the future books. I would highly recommend this book to those who love intriguing, mystery thrillers.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Jane Harper writes wonderful novels that take place in Australia. This is the second of the Aaron Falk series. In this, five women go on a job related endurance trip to the outback. One (Alice) goes missing. Falk is a police investigator who happens to be using Alice as an informant to get information about the owners of the company she works for and so he gets involved in the search for her. The novel segues between the narrative of the 4 days the women were in the wilderness and the search taking place to find them. There is a lot going on in the book and Harper does a great job of weaving a suspenseful tale and deepening the portrayal of Falk, as we will continue to see in her subsequent books.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Many readers worried Australian author Jane Harper couldn't top her award-winning debut novel The Dry, but I'm here to tell you she has! Force of Nature is a ripping read and just as full of thrilling suspense as The Dry. The end of each chapter unapologetically forces you to continue onto the next, with a freshly stoked desire to find out what happens.Force of Nature can easily be read as a standalone, however it does feature the same main character AFP Officer Aaron Falk. This time Falk is investigating the case of a missing person, lost in the bush during a corporate team building and camping retreat. Each of the five female staff members on the retreat have their own problems and the conflict that grows and festers between them was expertly written.Jane Harper captures the menacing and unforgiving wilderness of the Australian bush with such precision, that several scenes reminded me of the 1886 oil painting Lost by Australian artist Frederick McCubbin.I'm recommending Force of Nature to readers everywhere and it's certainly been a highlight on my reading calendar this year.* Copy courtesy of Pan Macmillan Australia *
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Kept my attention but wasn't as good as "The Dry". I'm not evenly remotely interested in hiking in Australia. Recommended.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Writing throughout jumped around but was intriguing enough to get me to the end. Then, after hoping it would build up to an impactful end, didn’t. One out of five stars is far too many.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Five women go on a hike, out of the office on a team building exercise. Bree, Beth, Jill and Lauren all come back, late and with injuries. Alice however is not with them. Where is she and what has happened. Aaron Faulk has a special interest in Alice and has to find out what really happened.This is the second book to feature Aaron Faulk. The first, The Dry was one of my favourite reads last year. This second book is as good as if not better.The story is told back and forth with the search for Alice and what happened when the five women were out hiking. I especially enjoyed the parts of the story about the women whilst they were out hiking. Without sounding cliché this book really was a page turner. I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen. I didn't guess anything at all but events do all come together and the clues were there.This book for me was very entertaining and a good solid read. If I hadn't have read the first one it wouldn't matter very much as this one can be read as a stand alone, but I would recommend both books by Jane Harper and will look for future works.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Not as good as The Dry (mystery not as compelling, missing some twists and turns) but still a good read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Aaron Falk is back, but this time he's called to the Bush to investigate the disappearance of a woman who was about to turn over a bunch of contracts critical to his criminal investigation of her employer. But now a corporate team building even in the wilderness has gone spectacularly wrong, and the woman is missing--or worse. With his capable partner Carmen, Falk becomes part of the search as the novel shifts between the present and the four days the five women were on their supposed-to-be easy trek. It is an effective story, and the characters are fairly interesting, but compared to the suspense of The Dry, in which Falk himself was a prime participant in the plot line--not just a detective, Force of Nature falls a bit short. At times, it is just a bit contrived in search of drama--but maybe I'm not an expert on what 5 women lost in the Bush might chooser to fight about. The way the whole hike is set up is messed up, too. For example, food is waiting in the base caps--but not the cylinder of gas to cook it?The audiobook was extremely well read by Stephen Shanahan.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great crime fiction. The story is told in flashback to recent events, alternating with reports of current investigative activity. Tightly plotted, and with suspense at the end of almost every allternating segment.At first the crime is not apparent and almost all the characters seem evil and believable suspects. As the story unfolds the characters evolve to more ordinary personalities who do ordinary things that sometimes turn out very badly.This is Jane Harper's second book (after The Dry). I'll be back for more.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    One Friday night, eight colleagues head into the Australian bush on a corporate team-building event. The men follow one route, the women another. On Sunday, the women return much later than scheduled, and one of them is missing. The police are called, and search and rescue teams begin their work. The missing woman, Alice Russell, is a key figure in a money laundering investigation led by Aaron Falk, and had left a faint and garbled voice mail for Aaron over the weekend. Falk realizes he may have been the last person to hear from Alice, and joins the search effort along with his partner Carmen Cooper.The women lost the trail on the second day, which caused them to miss the depot where they could replenish supplies. They had been required to surrender their phones before departure; Alice secretly held on to hers but it didn’t matter, there was no signal to be found. On their own with no way to get help, tensions escalated as their resources dwindled. The women told police that Alice simply walked away from their campsite during the night, and was not seen again. Was she a victim of an accident, or foul play? Was someone from her own group out to get her because she knew too much about the money laundering? It seems like every member of the group is a bit shifty and a possible suspect. Investigators have little to go on other than interviews, but readers are privy to a day-by-day narrative of the women’s trek and power dynamics at play in the group. Suspense builds as this narrative and the investigation converge, leading to a resolution that had been just out of reach but, once revealed, made complete sense.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Another solid entry into the Falk series. These aren't flashingly brilliant mysteries, but they're solidly built, and the pacing is good. I'll keep reading.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a perfectly serviceable mystery/thriller, but nothing special and not as good as her first. It doesn't drag--intertwining the two storylines helps a lot--but the resolution fizzles out.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    More like three and a half stars, not bad for the ilk. A respectable diversionary read for me. The blurb is descriptive enough of the storyline.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This book did not work for me. I read "The Dry" so I looked forward to another book that Included detective Aaron Falk from Harper's "The Dry". Basically, this is about a corporate retreat where 2 sets of executives(5 women, 5 men) set out into the Australian bush for a 3 day team building exercise. On the day of return the men show up on time but the women come back 6 hours late with one missing. The rest of the book is the back story as to what happened on the trail. It bounces back between the women on the trail and the present with Falk and his partner Carmen looking for clues as to what happened. Their involvement is because Alice, the missing woman, was an informant who was helping them get proof of financial wrong doings by her company. Harper tries to create some suspense as to what happens, but she is all over the place. What hurt the book the most is that a mystery should have a plot that is somewhat believable. Having a group of inexperienced hikers on a trail with no communication devices was a tough one for me to accept. Also they couldn't locate a cabin the women had used for shelter even though the women had just hiked out of the bush from that cabin. Harper was trying to deal with all the back stories and in the end there was not much there. If you want to read Harper try "The Dry". I am mystified what the 5 star reviewers saw because I sensed no suspense. This is one of the lowest ratings I have even given a book on library thing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Book 2 of Aaron Falk Series - Excellent Murder/Mystery. A group of collegues go on a hiking trip to encourage team building; the group splits up to a men's team and women's team - they are suppose to meet back at a rendezvous place at a certain time Only - 1 women who took off on her own never arrives - it turns out she also is the person working with Fed agent Falk to uncover suspicious money laundering within the company she works for and was expected to provide documents to the investigators for the indictment. Suspicions of who is responsible for the missing woman and will they find her in the dense bush before its too late to save her. Very good and fast paced.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Overall, a bit predictable but still enjoyable. Nothing extraordinary stands out to me. I feel it’s not her best work.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Much like The Dry there are several red herrings in this story to make the reader think there will be a twist, only to find the actual culprit was fairly predictable. That said, I don't think that's a damning criticism because both books are more interested in building characters and studying human nature than in creating a taut whodunnit. If the former is the style you're looking for, you'll probably rate this one higher than I did.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I'm really glad I've started this series set in Australia. A good, tight mystery with tangled motives and interesting red herrings, it is set in one of those dreary team-building exercises in the wilderness, which of course goes wrong in devastating ways. Some of that wrongness has nothing to do with the wildness of the Australian bush, but instead the wildness of present-day teenage lives and the pressures of family loyalty. A nice peeling of the onion to get at the truth, and no artificial sweeteners.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Fantastic mystery. The story is told in alternating timelines (the events leading up to the disappearance and the investigation that takes place after it) which does a superb job of building the suspense. The author also creates several different conflicts, any of which might have played into Alice's disappearance. There are multiple complex relationships and a deep intertwining of the characters' lives. The author paced the novel well so that there was a slow release of information but while still being compelling. Very enjoyable read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Another good one from Harper.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    3.5. Second novel for the author of The Dry, which I liked better. This one still does a good job of building suspense and complicating a mysterious death. Australian ‘Fed’ Aaron Falk is called in on when Alice ends up missing during a corporate retreat. He and attractive partner Carmen are already targeting her for white collar crimes - she is the informer who would’ve handed over crucial docs after the company event. She and 4 other women are deposited in the outback wilderness (where a serial killer was active a generation ago) - Jill is company co-owner, Bri is her personal asst., Bri’s twin sister is rough around the edges and doesn’t fit the team mold, Lauren is an former classmate and the two have daughters with a history. In short, everyone has a reason to kill Alice if the wilderness doesn’t do her in. Early on day 2 the group gets lost and tempers and buried feelings flare. Alice threatens to go off on her own and morning of Day 3, she’s gone. Falk and his attractive, but engaged partner search and also try to uncover connections among the women and the company. Good enough surprise ending. Falk’s own ghosts and ruminations get a little tiresome and distracting, but he remains like able. Would probably give book 3 a try.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really like this book and can hardly wait to read The Dry. Jane Harper is a darn good writer.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I liked this book but it could have easily been 100 pages shorter. Five ladies from a big Melbourne Accountants called Bailley/ Tennants all go out to the Bush for a team building exercise and after a few days they get lost, fall out and only 4 of them make it out alive. The book looks at the background and private lives of these Ladies. Police Officer Aaron Falk and his colleague Carmen are looking into some financial irregularities and have asked Alice to assist them, Alice is the one who doesnt make it out of the Bush alive. This is a whodunnit mystery. Spoiler alert Lauren killed Alice they had known eachother for years, they went to the same posh Girls school and so do their daughters. Alice was a bit of a bitch to everyone. Laura then jumps to her death in the big Waterfall near where the camp is.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Yet again, this Goodreads star rating system fails for me. This book needed a 3.5 rating. I was disappointed with this story, after really enjoying Harper’s previous page-turning novel. This book could have been edited to half its size, as it did not become a page turner until about the last quarter. The characters and dialogue were authentic - I just felt the narrative lacked the tension I felt whilst reading The Dry.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The best kind of novels are both character-driven and plot-driven, not one or the other. That’s what we get with FORCE OF NATURE. This is a mystery in which we learn a tiny bit more and a tiny bit more as the story is told from various characters’ points of view. FORCE OF NATURE is a literary thriller.Although FORCE OF NATURE isn’t quite as thrilling as THE DRY, Jane Harper’s first mystery/thriller, it does continue with Aaron Falk, the Australian federal agent who is also a main character in THE DRY. Plus, FORCE OF NATURE, while maybe not just as, is still an unputdownable book.This story involves a missing-person case in which a woman, Alice, has disappeared from her employer-sponsored hiking/camping trip. Although the federal government would not ordinarily bother with a case at this level, Alice has secretly been providing documents to Falk that he needed for his investigation of her employer. He is concerned that her disappearance had something to do with this.The more we learn about each character and what she did during their hiking/camping trip, the closer we come to an answer. But it is so convoluted, you will only come close.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Five colleagues set off on a corporate wilderness retreat. One woman does not make it out. I tried to listen to this book in audio format, but the book jumped between the retreat and the present and alternated narrators too often to provide a good experience. I never warmed to the main characters, and Peter Falk's investigation took a back seat to the women. Even though I enjoyed listening to Steve Shanahan's Aussie accent, it wasn't enough to keep me engaged. I loved The Dry and wanted to like this one too, but it didn't "click." I might try to read it rather than listen to it in the future, but I will not prioritize it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The second in a great series (the first was The Dry). I have become a huge Jane Harper fan!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    4.5 stars.

    Force of Nature is a perplexing mystery about a woman who disappears during a corporate team-building exercise in the Australian bushland.  This second installment in the Aaron Falk series is a sharp contrast to the first novel, The Dry, but this newest release from Jane Harper is equally compelling.

    Jill and Daniel Bailey, siblings and co-owners of the BaileyTennants Accounting firm, are among the group of employees who are on a team-building adventure in the Giralong Ranges. At the end of the retreat, all of the men safely return, but one of the women, Alice Russell, is missing after their group becomes lost during the hike. The police have a rather garbled account of what occurred between Alice, her assistant, Breanna "Bree" McKenzie, Bree's sister Beth, Lauren Shaw and Jill.

    Federal Police Agents Aaron Falk and his partner Carmen Cooper become involved in the search for Alice because she is surreptitiously providing evidence in a case they are building against BaileyTennants. The morning of her disappearance, Alice left a voice message on Aaron's phone, but due to poor cell reception he could only make out a small portion of what she said. With horrendous rain and the rugged terrain hindering their search, fears quickly grow that their quest to find Alice might end in tragedy.

    Jill is the chairwoman of the company and she is reluctantly part of the excursion at the behest of Daniel.  She is horribly out of shape and not a fan of their wilderness endeavor. Both Alice and Lauren have experience with hiking but their longstanding, somewhat dark history often pits them against one another as they try to decide how to proceed after they go off track. Beth and Bree might be sisters but their once close relationship fractured after Beth's life wildly deviated from her sister's successful climb up the corporate ladder.  All of the women's complex relationships come into play as they fight for survival during their horrific experience in the bushland.

    Aaron and Carmen are only a very small part of the ongoing investigation into BaileyTennants' business practices and they can only guess what charges will be eventually be brought against the company. What they do know is the inquiry is at a crucial juncture and they are in desperate need of the documents that Alice was about to turn over to them. Unsure of whether or not her disappearance has anything to do with their investigation, Carmen and Aaron arrive at Giralong Ranges hoping the other members of the retreat can provide answers for what went wrong during the hike. However, they quickly deduce that the women might not be as forthcoming as they could be, but what exactly are they hiding from the investigators?

    The first puzzling bit of information that Aaron and Carmen learn is Daniel was unexpectedly detained before he, Jill and their employees were to depart for Giralong Ranges.  They also discover that Daniel sought out Alice the first night of the hike after the women made camp. No one knows what they discussed but all of the women admit Alice was not quite herself the next morning. They quickly glean the women's tempers flared at different times throughout the second day and after the women are hopelessly lost, Alice further antagonized the party with her highhanded, know it all attitude. Although the women eventually find shelter, they continue to bicker and disagree about whether or not they should wait for a rescue team to find them or continue trying to find their back to the rendezvous point.

    Written from alternating points of view, Force of Nature is an intricately plotted mystery that is quite riveting. Unexpected rivalries, jealousy, unanticipated rifts and shocking resentment all contribute to what happen to the women during their attempts to find their way the designated meeting point.  Aaron and Carmen might not be officially assigned to the search, but Aaron is instrumental in putting together the pieces of what happened to Alice.  One of Jane Harper's strengths as an author is her ability to bring the setting vibrantly to life and the location and weather conditions are vital elements of the unfolding story. This newest addition to the Aaron Falk series is a complex and multi-dimensional mystery that fans of the genre are going to LOVE.