Force of Nature by Jane Harper

“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.”(From the book jacket)
The men and women are separated and they are meant to come of the wilderness at the same meet up point. This is supposed to be a team-building event with the Bailey’s company and I can say for sure, I’m certainly glad I have never been forced to participate in such an exercise. The women are so very different from one another, some with secrets and some vying for the alpha role once they are lost.

“Later, the four remaining women could fully agree on only two things. One: No one saw the bushland swallow up Alice Russell. And two: Alice had a mean streak so sharp it could cut you.”

Alice was a real can of worms. I did not have this figured out early at all so this was quite a good read for me.  On their own in the bushland it’s easy to panic. “It’s the panic that gets you. Makes it hard to trust what you’re seeing.”

The weather plays a big part in this story. It’s freezing cold, it rains, it makes it miserable for search parties looking for Alice. The isolation the women feel is clearly conveyed as you read about their part of the story.

“Jill sometimes thought that in another time and place, she and Alice might have been friends. At other times, she thought not. Being around Alice was like owning an aggressive breed of dog. Loyal when it suited, but you had to stay on your toes.”

Food and wine weren’t mentioned much but there was this:
Beef stew made by the campfire. “A kookaburra perched nearby, watching Beth with her black eyes. Beth picked up a strip of beef from one of the abandoned packets and tossed it toward the bird, who scooped it up with the tip of her beak.”
I didn’t know they ate meat!

Aaron made dinner for Carmen. Spaghetti Bolognese and red wine. Sauce was from scratch too. So I had thought of making the spaghetti dish but we had Linguine Pompeii so, that’s the representative dish.

This is the second book in the series starring Federal Agent Aaron Falk and I sincerely hope there will be many more stories to follow. He’s a law enforcement with the specialty in financial crimes.

He used to be SWAT, a bad ass cop who busted in and arrested the bad guys. One time his team went in and a malnourished old man was sitting in a tattered chair. There was graffiti on his walls, there was a drug kitchen set up and thugs living in his home. The man thought one of the criminals was his grandson. Dementia was setting in and these guys took full advantage of it.  Aaron realized later all this could have been caught with a look at his financial records, bank statements and charges.

It goes way beyond that too – follow the money trail and you find more than small drug operations. Prostitution, pornography, large scale drug operations. Follow the money. Falk was following up on contracts Alice was meant to get from the company.

I liked The Dry better than this one but I will happily read another starring Federal Agent Falk.