Frank H. (perryfran) reviewed on 11/3/2020 + 1223 more book reviews

I read Harper's THE DRY a few months ago and thought it was a really great thriller. This is her follow-up to that novel and it again features Aaron Falk, a Federal police agent who specializes in financial crimes in Australia. In this one, a group of five women go on a required corporate retreat in the wilderness of Australia's outback. The retreat is part of a team-building exercise run by a corporation owned by the Bailey family. Early one morning, Falk receives a very short cell phone call from Alice Russell who is part of the wilderness retreat and is also Falk's whistleblower for his investigation into money laundering by the Baileys. It turns out that Alice has gone missing after the women's group gets lost during their retreat. The other four women make it back to safety after they assumed that Alice walked out on her own. So what happened to Alice? Harper throws in a lot of different possibilities and false leads. The wilderness area they were in was also the site of some serial killings several years earlier and the son of the killer may still be in the area. Or could Alice have been killed by someone in the corporation who knew about her working as a whistleblower for Falk? There is also a lot of animosity among the group of women and nobody seemed to like Alice who was somewhat of a bully.

I enjoyed this novel but not quite as much as THE DRY. It seemed like the focus of FORCE OF NATURE was more on the group of women and problems in their families rather than on Falk. Falk just seemed to be along for the ride and didn't really play much of a role in determining the fate of Alice. I will, however, probably be reading more of Harper's novels in the future.

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