3.33⭐ ( )

I listened to this Australian mystery and I really enjoyed the narration. Stephen Shanahan has done all of Jane Harper's audiobooks, I gather, and I can see why. His voice is perfect for them.

Aaron Falk, a police detective, is visiting friends in the Marralee Valley during the Marralee Valley Food and Wine Festival. His friends, the Racos, have asked Aaron to be godfather to their son and the christening is set for this weekend. Originally, it was scheduled for a year previously but when a young mother went missing during the festival all other activities were cancelled to allow for searching. The young mother, Kim Gillespie, used to live with Greg Raco's older brother, Charlie, in Marralee. They had a daughter together and she still wants to know what happened to her mother who has never been found. Kim had married and moved to Adelaide with her husband so the Racos had not seen much of her before her disappearance. Her husband says she had been suffering from post-natal depression and so the local authorities assume she committed suicide. Her shoe was found in the reservoir near to the fairgrounds but her body has never turned up. The reservoir was the scene of another local tragedy when Dean Tozer was hit by an unknown vehicle while walking his dog around the reservoir. He went into the reservoir and it took 5 months to find his body. Dean's son and Kim's daughter have become close due to these tragedies and the son's evidence that he never saw Kim leave by the gate that gave access to the reservoir where he was staffing the first-aid tent is one of the reasons her daughter doesn't believe she committed suicide. Greg Raco has been accumulating evidence during the past year and he asks Aaron to look over his file to see if he can come to any conclusions. So, although Aaron is on holidays and he enjoys going to the fair and spending time with his friends, he is also working on this mystery. In the end he works out what happened to Kim and to Dean Tozer but both solutions came as a surprise.

This is the third book in a series and I seem to have missed reading the second book. There were some references to events that probably arose in that book that I didn't understand so my recommendation would be to read the three books in order. ( )

Jane Harper is pretty hit or miss for me. I absolutely loved THE LOST MAN, and I enjoyed both THE DRY and THE SURVIVORS. FORCE OF NATURE, however, didn't work for me. So I was a little apprehensive going into this one. Within the first few chapters, I realized this wasn't going to be for me. It was just so damn slow. Six chapters in, I still didn't care about what happened to any of the characters. I'm pretty sure the entire novel is meant to be a slow burn to some major revelation, but I just didn't have the patience to get there. ( )

Falk goes into the country for the christening of Greg Raco's (character from The Dry) latest child and finds himself at the centre of a mystery disappearance of a relative of Raco's at a local wine fair. Deep characters and well plotted with the heart of the mystery only solved and recognised near the end of the book with all loose ends neatly tied off. ( )

This series is more cerebral and interpersonal than action oriented detective stuff. I certainly don't mind that but I must have been more in the mood for the latter as I find this a litle slow. I did like characters and setting just hoped for a little more to be going on. Still a good series. ( )