Force of Nature

I picked up Force of Nature because The Dry left me thinking about Aaron Falk. In that first book Jane Harper kept Falk in his home town, uneasy around people who remembered him as a boy tied to a drowning. I wanted to see him on strange ground. Harper published this one in 2017 with Flatiron Books. It runs 448 pages under ISBN 9781250214621. It is the second book in the Aaron Falk series. I saved it for a wet weekend, which turned out to fit. This is a cold, damp book about tired people making bad calls in the bush.

The setup is clean. A Melbourne accounting firm called BaileyTennants sends staff on a team building hike in the Giralang Ranges. Five men walk one track. Five women walk another. The men come out hungry and blistered. Only four women come out. Alice Russell is missing. Falk knows her name before the search crews do because Alice had been feeding him pieces about the firm. She rang from blocked numbers, hinted at false books, then went silent. He drives out with his partner Carmen Cooper feeling late.

What pulled me in is that Harper opens with offices, not trees. Falk replays Alice's last voicemail. Carmen asks what Alice promised and what she held back. Nobody knows if Alice fell, hid, ran, or was hurt by someone beside her. The bosses look worried and guarded at once. That mix rang true. Care for a missing worker next to fear of bad press.

A corporate hiking retreat nobody wanted

BaileyTennants is a family firm run by Daniel Bailey. Trust work, tax work, quiet clients. The retreat is meant to fix morale after cuts. A guide firm drops both groups with maps, tents, ration packs, and sealed phones for emergency only. Three nights, point to point through forest and gullies.

None of them are walkers. Jill Bailey is the boss's sister in law, older, keen to keep peace and guard the family name. Lauren Shaw is quiet, divorced, missing her teenage son. Alice Russell is sharp, prickly, quick to correct map reading. Bree is younger, fit, restless, dating a man in the other group. Sophie is youngest, eager to please, caught between Bree and Alice.

The men's group gets lost too and argues about shortcuts. I will admit those chapters blurred for me. Daniel, Lauren's ex husband, Bree's boyfriend, and two others who mostly follow. I flipped back twice to sort them. Harper keeps them thin on purpose to hold focus on the women, but the cost is real. For fifty pages I could not keep the men straight.

The trip admin feels right. Wrong ration counts. A compass nobody trusts. Wet socks. A missed turn at a fallen tree. A debate about leaving the track for a lookout. Harper shows how sore legs turn small slights large. Who snores. Who carries the first aid kit. Who shares chocolate. By day two I believed these women could hate each other by day three with no crime at all.

Alice Russell walks in and does not walk out

Alice drives the book even absent. At work she was good and difficult in equal parts. At home she is separated with young kids, juggling school runs and late files. To Falk she was a source. Months before the hike she said BaileyTennants moved client money through linked firms, with invoices covering gaps and cash drawn near reporting dates. She never gave him the full file. She gave hints, asked what they were worth, went quiet when pressed for names.

Carmen names it plainly. Sources like Alice want safety and control. Falk admits he handled her too softly. He missed a call the week before the retreat and told himself she was busy packing. Now she is gone from a track where only four others saw her last.

The four who walk out do not match. They say Alice split near the end, angry, ahead or behind, versions shift. They are scratched, bitten, dry mouthed. Jill cries then goes still at simple questions. Lauren stares down. Bree answers fast, as if speed ends it. Sophie shakes and says she cannot recall. A search boss marks the last known point on a muddy map. Rain is coming.

Harper keeps Alice half seen for a long stretch, through other eyes. Selfish. Brave. Rude. Scared. A woman who knew the Ranges a little from childhood trips with her father. A woman who told Jill she held something that could hurt Daniel. Bait or truth, it hangs over each interview.

Falk and Carmen work the money and the people

Falk and Carmen are a good change from Falk and Raco in The Dry. Raco was local and warm. Carmen is city, dry, watchful. New to Falk, not owing him loyalty. She notes when he softens around Alice's family and pulls him back to steps. She chases records while he walks trailheads with searchers.

The money case runs slow against fast bush work. Alice saw repeat names with shifted addresses, fees that did not match work, small sums moved and cleaned. She said she copied files at night. The firm calls her disgruntled after being passed over. Both can be true. Harper lets both sit without forcing a pick early.

Falk's guilt here is different from Kiewarra. There it was a boy's lie about Ellie. Here it is a handler's guilt. A missed call. A source walking into risk with coworkers she distrusted. Carmen tells him he cannot shield every source from every boss. It lands for a chapter, then fades when dogs lose scent near a creek.

Daniel Bailey sits with a lawyer and speaks in smooth lines. He prized Alice like family, he says. Nobody in the room buys the warmth. He admits the retreat was meant to bond staff. He denies money trouble. Jill sits beside him once, apart the next. Falk writes that shift down. Lauren's ex talks too much. Bree's boyfriend defends without knowing what needs defence. Harper is strong on half truths. People guard partners, siblings, jobs. Truth slips out sideways.

Fair criticism here. The money detail stays foggy too long. Harper says wash and flow without showing a clear line until late. I missed the ledger scenes from The Dry, Falk spreading papers and walking through dates. We get hints instead. Pace stays up, but the case feels thin until the last hundred pages.

Five women and four days of old splits

The core is the day by day hike, cut against the present search. Each chapter turns on a small choice. Who holds the map. Who sleeps where. Whether to push for shelter before dark.

Day one holds damp hope. Jokes about emails and blisters. Alice sets a hard pace and picks at the guide notes. Lauren mediates. She knew Alice from school, friends as girls, cooled when Lauren married and Alice judged the husband. Bree films on a phone she should have sealed. Sophie laughs too hard. Jill shares extra muesli bars packed against rules, buying good will.

Day two splits them. A missed turn, Alice says backtrack, Jill says push to a marked creek. They follow Jill, find the creek dry, blame Alice. They camp short in a dip that fills overnight. Tents leak. Alice tells Lauren she has proof that could sink Jill's family. Lauren cannot tell threat from plea. She tells nobody. Tired, wet, scared of sides. I found that silence sad and true.

Day three is Harper's best. Hunger, sore feet, a snake scare by a log, a river crossing that soaks boots. Bree and Sophie pair off. Jill and Lauren pair off. Alice walks the middle, near enough to hear, far enough to be cut out. Food rows flare when Alice is found with extra portions she says she carried in. A worse row flares when Bree reads Alice's journal pages aloud. Alice calls Jill sheltered. Jill calls Alice cruel. Lauren cries and hates it. Sophie freezes, and Bree calls her useless, a word Sophie keeps.

Weak spot worth naming. Too many I cannot recall lines. Sophie blanks. Lauren fudges times. Bree reshapes. It suits tired minds, yet after the third blank I grew restless. One plain timeline would have helped. We get slivers that build mood but slow trust. I stayed for the bush pressure more than the puzzle clicks.

Small acts stack. A knife moved. A map torn at the fold. A kit left at a rest stop. A choice to drop packs and day walk for signal. Each makes sense cold and looks strange later in a police room. Harper shows both the muddy choice and the clean retelling. The gap between them is the book.

Searching the Giralang Ranges in rain

The search chapters smell of wet bark and diesel. The Giralang Ranges are made up but built from real Victorian bush. Mountain ash, tree ferns, leeches, drops, creeks that rise fast. Sound bends in gullies. A bright tent can sit twenty meters off track and stay hid. Crews run grids. Helicopters wait on cloud. Falk walks with locals who know pig trails and old cuts.

Falk is fit but not bush fit. Calves burn. Boots rub. Carmen blisters and refuses a lift, learns tape marks, brings coffee to volunteers by name. Falk copies her. After Kiewarra, where he was the boy who left, he tries to be the man who stays a cold night at base.

Two finds shift things. Torn gear and a damaged tent in a gully off route. Then signs of shelter under rock ledges near a creek the women crossed twice without knowing. A tracker shows Falk prints and points with a stick to avoid touch. The men's stamps put them miles off at key hours, though they wandered too. Their hunger is real, which cuts both ways. Tired men make poor witnesses, honest or not.

Rain turns procedure to strain. Creeks fill. Fog drops. A night search is called off and Falk argues to keep a small team out, thinking of Alice's kids asking when mum returns. Carmen talks him down and sits with him in the car while rain hits the roof. I liked that they can clash without feud. They are learning tells.

One base chapter sags. Falk and Carmen re interview the four women while teams wait, circling the same ground. Who held the knife last. Who saw Alice at dawn. Who heard shouts after lights out. Stress repeats phrases until I skimmed. Then a small note about a watch time proved to matter. Tighter cutting here would have kept pull without losing the fog Harper wants.

What the bush kept and what it gave back

Keeping turns light, but shape needs telling. Alice did not fall by chance alone. The group broke and left marks. Harper ties the last night to greed and panic more than plan. Someone thought Alice carried copies in her pack and wanted them. An old school debt wanted paying in shame. A push, a fall, a slow choice not to hurry back. Cold and water did the rest.

The money answer follows the bush answer and stains Daniel's polish. BaileyTennants moved client funds to cover gaps and take quiet fees. Alice had pattern, not full names. Falk and Carmen use her notes plus records to press one insider to talk. Jill hurt me most. She loves the family and sees the firm as her husband's life. She knew less than Alice claimed and more than Daniel hoped. Her quiet on track and in office share a root. Speak and the family falls. Stay quiet and a woman stays lost.

Lauren stayed with me longest. She starts avoiding choice. On track she must pick between old friend and group safety, between telling police of a half heard threat and shielding her son from scandal tied to his father. Harper gives her one brave walk back up a creek in rain to look for Alice after others vote to move on. It fails and still counts. It shows her when no boss watches.

Bree and Sophie read young and raw. Bree hides fear in speed and jokes, then pays when speed looks like guilt. Sophie learns freezing costs too. Neither is a villain. Both do small harms that swell in cold. Harper keeps them human, which I respected even wanting cleaner blame.

Falk ends tired, not healed. Enough to charge, enough to explain, not enough to feel clean. Carmen says Alice made choices too, true and not enough. He faces her family with paperwork that cannot fix waiting. Last pages put him in Melbourne traffic with mud in his treads, thinking how fast offices forget. Quiet close, less showy than The Dry. It suited me.

I closed admiring Harper's grip on place and group rot, wishing the money bit earlier. The bush carries it. The office explains it. Together they show a firm that sold trust and a hike that stripped manners. If you want twists each chapter, the middle may drag. Two interviews repeat. The men take space without equal payoff. Proof stays vague till late. Those drags are real across 448 pages. Yet the last hundred move. Prints, packs, watches, creek lines line up. The harm to Alice is named without tricks. Falk and Carmen stand closer, ready for next. I put it down damp in my head from rain, glad to walk out with four and aching for the fifth.