The Dry and Force of Nature (Aaron Falk #1 and #2) by Jane Harper

mystery

The Dry (Aaron Falk #1)

Amy  

Aaron Falk, a federal agent, travels to his small home town in an arid region of Australia to attend his former best friend, Luke’s, funeral.  But, because of Falk’s past troubles and because of unusual circumstances surrounding Luke’s death, Falk ends up staying in town to assist the local police chief with his investigation.

The Dry by Jane Harper grabbed me from the start and never let go.  Falk’s back story and current-day investigation discoveries were equally interesting.  I wanted to know what happened in both the past mysterious death and the current one.  Jane Harper did a nice job of creating an interesting cast of characters and placing just the right amount of doubt or uncertainty about each of them to keep the reader guessing.  Of course, since it’s a mystery, I can’t say much without giving something away.  I won’t say that I was surprised at the resolutions but I wasn’t completely sure until the end. And I liked the way the storylines wrapped up. There is a sequel which also stars Aaron Falk so I’ve added it to my To Read list!

Steve Shanahan was the narrator of the audiobook and I loved his voice.  He’s Australian which made him an excellent choice for reading this story. He was a great voice actor! My main complaint was that he does not have a large repertoire of different voices. But I enjoyed the timbre of his voice and the quality of his story-telling so much so I’ll give him an A.  I will, however, complain about the production of this recording.  I don’t know if it was Shanahan himself or the director, but there were multiple silent breaks in the narration at odd, random moments which were not in the written novel. (I looked at the pages you can read for free on Amazon to verify that the audio breaks did not correspond to real chapter or section breaks.)  It often happened right in the middle of a dialogue or active sequence and was distracting.  I’m usually complaining that narrators do not take breaks when they should but this is the first time I’m complaining that too many were taken.

Force of Nature (Aaron Falk #2)

Amy   

A group of coworkers goes on a team-building camping weekend.  Ten people go into the woods, only nine come out. What happened to the missing woman?

After enjoying The Dry, I wanted to give Jane Harper’s sequel, Force of Nature, a read.  Sadly, I had issues with a major plot point.  The women’s group, made up of three company leaders and two low-level employees, set off together. Even though this group included two women who each spent a year of intensive outdoor survival training as students, they had assigned the job of navigating the remote forests’ map to a novice. Plus, when that woman had obviously not even taken a good look at the map before they were on-site and setting off with backpacks, and never outwardly seemed confident in her directions, they still didn’t have any problem following her lead until they were lost.  DUH!  The two women with outdoor knowledge were company leaders and I just couldn’t buy that at all.  They would have stepped in much earlier to take a look at the map if the navigator seemed ill-prepared and uncertain. I know I would have!  So, the fact that they were lost is what caused all the trouble for the group. Therefore, this flawed manipulation by the author annoyed me early and ruined my enjoyment of the rest of it, honestly.

If I look past that clumsy device, the rest of it was enjoyable. I definitely wanted to know what happened to the missing woman and the pacing of the story kept me interested the entire time.  As with The Dry, I was kept guessing until the end.  The characters were fun to get to know.  I enjoyed it. 

As with The Dry, Stephen Shanahan was the narrator of the audiobook.  He’s a great voice actor. My complaint in this novel was that it involved a lot of characters and I wished he’d slowed down a little bit at the beginning to let me remember which character he was referring to every time he said someone’s name.  I found myself having to backtrack multiple times, indexing the character in my head and then going back to hear what that character said or did.  This is likely my own memory issue and not Shanahan’s reading. So, it’s not necessarily his fault I had trouble but more the nature of listening to an audiobook with this many characters introduced at once.  So, I’ll give him an A.