Force of Nature by Jane Harper review – five go feral in the outback

Jane Harper’s 2017 debut, The Dry, was an international bestseller, and has been optioned by the production company behind the film of Gone Girl. Force of Nature, her second novel, looks likely to attract similar enthusiasm for a screen adaptation. It is a gripping procedural, with the narrative chops and assured pace of a Hollywood thriller. Elevator pitch: Deliverance with oestrogen, or a menopausal Picnic at Hanging Rock.

First introduced in The Dry, Aaron Falk is a police officer in the financial investigation unit in Melbourne. Along with his partner, Carmen Cooper, he has pressured Alice Russell, an employee of family-run conglomerate BaileyTennants, into cooperating with them in building their case against the company for unspecified financial peccadilloes. But Alice has gone missing while on an “Executive Adventures” outward-bound course with four other BaileyTennants employees: CEO Jill Bailey, twitchy old schoolfriend Lauren and dysfunctional twins Breanna and Beth, all of whom emerge from the bush traumatised by the events surrounding Alice’s disappearance. Throw in a competing male team that includes Jill’s shady brother, Dan, along with the unsolved mystery of a local serial killer and the desperate last message Alice left on Falk’s mobile, and the scene is captivatingly set.

The story spools deftly between the present tense of Falk and Cooper’s investigation and the past tense of the expedition, leading up to Alice’s disappearance while filling us in on everyone’s backstories. As in The Dry, which drew a lot of its power from its setting in the remote, arid town of Kiewarra, the hostile bushland of the Giralang Ranges plays a major part in the book. The women quickly lose their way, geographically and emotionally. Unspoken rifts are acknowledged, then disagreements turn physical. The rapid descent into feral chaos once the city folk are far from civilisation is satisfyingly done (a woman first seen rejecting her latte for being lukewarm is reduced to slurping brackish water from a tree stump). The Giralang Ranges are fictional, which may explain a certain descriptive vagueness. It’s unhelpful just to be told there is a gum tree, for example, if the only thing you know about gum trees is that it’s not good to be up one. Although as the days of Alice’s disappearance tick by, she looks like being up the worst gum tree of all, whatever her connection to the dodgy contracts Falk’s boss is exhorting him to get hold of at all costs.

As in The Dry, Harper deploys end-of-chapter hooks and narrative misdirections with aplomb. But with a style that is efficient at best (people never smile: instead, their mouths always “lift at the corners”), Force of Nature begs for an internal dynamism. Perhaps Falk is the problem. In The Dry he’s personally connected to a story that forced his exile from his hometown. Here, it’s strictly business, and given the nature of that business – the clue is in “financial” – he is more methodical accountant than maverick cop. His USP is his decency, and although he gets the job done, he’s not the most personable or intriguing protagonist. The resolution of his father issues feels like a rote attempt to sketch a third dimension for a two-dimensional character, as does his mild flirtation with the engaged Carmen. With the exception of an excursion to Melbourne that comes at the perfect point in the story, whenever the focus pulls back to Falk’s trudging investigation one resents leaving the more vividly rendered escalation of conflict between the firm’s suspects out in the bush. Among the warring women, the stripping down of personality effected by the cheerless landscape encapsulates a compelling sense of 21st-century dread. As Breanna summarises when they realise danger surrounds them, some of it of their own making:

Force of Nature definitely leads you into that wilderness, even if Falk won’t let you get lost.

• Amanda Coe’s latest novel is Everything You Do Is Wrong (Fleet). Force of Nature by Jane Harper (Little, Brown, £12.99). To order a copy for £11.04, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.