Force of Nature

This second mystery from author Jane Harper continues with the protagonist we met in her first book (The Dry) and once again is set alternately in Melbourne and the remote areas of Australia. Federal agent Aaron Falk investigates financial crimes and he is neck deep in a money laundering case in which they have invested months of time and hundreds of hours. He and his partner, Carmen Cooper, are getting pressure from the top to force their mole in the targeted company, Alice Russell, to get copies of some key contracts. But now Alice, along with four of her female co-workers and her boss at Bailey Tennants have been sent into the rugged Giralang Range on a corporate team-building exercise. And, when the group of women emerge from the trek several days late, Alice is no longer among them.
Aaron discovers this when he is contacted by the head of the search team. Apparently Alice had tried to call Aaron sometime after she disappeared, but the signal or the phone failed before he could talk to her. Now terrain as well as weather conspire to hinder an already overwhelmingly difficult search for the missing woman. Did the company execs find out that Alice was betraying them to the federal investigators and do away with her? As the remaining women are interviewed, we come to find no one liked Alice very much, certainly not her bullied personal assistant, Breeana, Breeana's formerly drug addicted twin who works in the mail room, or former schoolmate, Lauren. And there's also the 20 year old legacy of the Giralangs, which were once the hideout of a serial killer. Rumor has it the killer's son has gotten out of jail and come back.
The story is alternately told as a procedural from Aaron's point of view--with minor asides about his relationship with his father and his non-existent love life--and the recollections from the women in the group as the facade of civilization falls away and the repressed resentments and distrust emerge and then erupt in physical violence.
More detailed storylines and reviews are available from The Guardian, The Independent, Publishers Weekly, and  Kirkus who called it a "spooky, compelling read."