The Dry

The Dry by Jane Harper
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After many years of enforced absence, police officer Aaron Falk returns to his home town to attend the funeral of his former best friend, who, it would seem, took his own life, having just murdered his wife and his young son. But this is a town with old secrets that Falk must uncover.

I’d read the second book in this series, Force of Nature, and was tempted to try the first one. While I managed to put everything together when I was two-thirds of the way through, I enjoyed learning more about Falk—something Harper doesn’t really achieve in Force of Nature. A very nice read for a whodunnit.

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Force of Nature

Force of Nature by Jane Harper
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Five went out, four came back. In her follow-up to The Dry (which I haven’t read, but I really should), Harper’s detective, Aaron Falk, is called into a case when one of his informants goes missing on a corporate team-building retreat in the fictional Giralang Ranges outside of Melbourne. The prestigious accounting firm BaileyTennants is suspected of money laundering, so what has become of Alice, Falk’s whistle-blower?
This well-written, well-paced thriller flashes back and forth between the investigation at hand and what happened on each of the four days of hike from the perspectives of the five women. A lot can go wrong in the bush—and it does—as Harper builds the suspense. I was particularly impressed with her ability to write fight scenes. The action gets quite physical at times, and this was conveyed brilliantly by the writing.
I would be happy to revisit this series again.

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