Force of nature: Jane Harper (Aaron Falk, 2) - Tapa dura

Jane Harper, the new Queen of Crime...Even more impressive than The Dry...Harper makes it look easy but she has to pace two narratives without giving too much away, creating an almost unbearable level of suspense...Nature is a hostile, unpredictable force in both of Harper's novels, but her brilliance lies in making it into a test of horribly fallible human nature (The Sunday Times)

'The most exciting emerging novelist of the last 12 months...As gripping, atmospheric and ingeniously plotted as The Dry, it places Harper in the elevated company of the authors she most admires: Val McDermid, Gillian Flynn and Lee Child (Mail on Sunday)

Powerful, intriguing and recommended...Harper is wonderful at evoking fear and unease, and she draws a mesmeric picture of the terrifying Australian terrain (The Times)

Jane Harper is more from the Patricia Highsmith and Donna Tartt school of mystery: elegant, intelligent and not for the faint-hearted...As chapters swap between the tense outward-bound weekend (where self-hatred, fear and resentment jostle for position) and its subsequent investigation, Harper creates a claustrophobic page-turner that conjures up that other great Australian mystery, Joan Lindsay's Picnic At Hanging Rock (Emerald St)

Once again Harper leaves you gagging to know who did what. Once again there are plenty of suspects (Evening Standard)

Jane Harper has high literary credentials - her debut novel, The Dry, one of the big hits of last year, matched critical acclaim with bestselling sales figures. This second novel is just as good...Landscape is a sinister presence in Harper's novels and here it takes on a powerfully disruptive, psychological force...Harper creates an atmosphere of stifling claustrophobia as the novel inexorably telescopes in...This is that rare thing, a whodunnit where the writing is as satisfying as the thrills (Metro)

The delight of this spell-bindingly suspenseful thriller lies in the slow revelation of what really happened to the missing woman...This follow-up novel shows Harper is a crime-writing force to be reckoned with (Sunday Mirror)

Force of Nature is Jane Harper's eagerly awaited follow-up to her debut novel The Dry, an international bestseller that has won a string of awards....Harper's writing style has no frills but it is clear and beautifully paced. It makes the bushland come alive and the sense of the wilderness closing in is tangible...This thriller will make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck and leave you gripped to the final page (Daily Express)

Jane Harper's The Dry was a publisher's dream: a critically acclaimed debut novel that became an immediate best seller. Force of Nature is her follow-up, and it arrives without a trace of sophomore slump; if anything it is a better novel than its predecessor...While the plot unfolds at an expertly controlled pace and is resolved in a satisfyingly ambiguous fashion, it is the relationships between the women that drive the novel...thoughtful, moving, troubling (Irish Times)

A three-day team-building hike in the Australian bush ends in disaster when the unpleasant Alice Russell disappears. Throw in a serial killer, industrial espionage, and several unreliable narrators and you have a tense thriller that made me feel good about my decision never to go camping (Red magazine)