Force of Nature: by the author of the Sunday Times top ten bestseller, The Dry - Softcover

Jane Harper

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0349143471 ISBN 13: 9780349143477

Publisher: Abacus, 2018

Synopsis

The gripping new novel from the author of the Sunday Times top ten bestseller, Waterstones Thriller of the Month, Sunday Times Crime Book of the Year, CWA Gold Dagger Winner and Simon Mayo Radio 2 Book Club Choice, 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.

About this title

Review:

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 (The Sunday Times)

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 Daily Telegraph)

'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 (Mail on Sunday)

Powerful, intriguing and recommended...Harper is wonderful at evoking fear and unease, and she draws a mesmeric picture of the terrifying Australian terrain (The Times)

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 Independent)

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 (Emerald St)

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 (Sunday Times)

Once again Harper leaves you gagging to know who did what. Once again there are plenty of suspects (Evening Standard)

This irresistible thriller is a perfect summer read - and a warning against bonding weekends with colleagues you don't like . . . (Mail on Sunday)

Jane Harper has high literary credentials - her debut novel, The Dry, one of the big hits of last year, matched critical acclaim with bestselling sales figures. This second novel is just as good...Landscape is a sinister presence in Harper's novels and here it takes on a powerfully disruptive, psychological force...Harper creates an atmosphere of stifling claustrophobia as the novel inexorably telescopes in...This is that rare thing, a whodunnit where the writing is as satisfying as the thrills (Metro)

Book Description:

The best in compulsive literary crime, from the author of the Sunday Times top ten bestseller, The Dry.

About this edition

• Publisher: Abacus
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0349143471
• ISBN 13: 9780349143477
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 432