“It’s the panic that gets you. Makes it hard to trust what you’re seeing.”

Tall gums. Tasman National Park, Tasman Peninsula. May 2021.

Force of Nature by Jane Harper

Much like The Dry, I found this one a gripping little police procedural with a small cast of characters, an intriguing mystery and a suitably claustrophobic setting. Like the earlier novel, the landscape is at the forefront of generating tension. This time around, the dark, cool temperate rainforest of Victoria's east replaces the dry and arid plains of the northwest. However, ghosts of the past remain.

Events move at a cracking pace, and the narrative jumps backwards and forwards across multiple perspectives. Then, finally, the story moves back towards the explanation as to exactly what happened out there in the bush. Harper has chosen a particularly odious bunch of corporate women within which she centres her mystery. Suffice to say, there are plenty of candidates from this small bunch with whom we'd enjoy some comeuppance.

The book deftly treads the line between exciting, engaging and pacy and doesn't outstay its welcome. The villains are suitably villainous, the wounded damaged (but not entirely beyond repair). Our hero Aaron Falk remains aloof but charming and is slowly working his way towards healing. We even get the slightest hint of romance in the air to spice things up. The perfect palate cleanser after a run of the heavier stuff!

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2

Comments

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.

Can you believe that it is time for Theme Thursday already? Today we are not talking chocolate , toddlers , mess or ignominy . No, today we're dealing with ANIMAL . Now I could have posted a picture of a possum, numbat, wombat, wallaby or any other furry killing machine that roams our fair isle, but I figure that I'd use a far more deadly creature as an example of an animal . Some people - I know them as fools - have chosen to embrace that highfalutin idea that human beans are for some ungodly reason superior to animals. Of course, what these imbeciles seem to forget is that were are simple animals ourselves ! Anyone with a baby, toddler, teenage boy or Queenslander in their household could tell you this. Look at Henry [above]. One chocolate frog in the back of the car on a sunny day and all of a sudden it's Elagabalus meets Bacchus for a quick shandy in the Serengeti and we're down on all fours carrying on like a cat in heat. Fair dinkum, anyone who chooses to ...

This will hurt me...

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