The group is split between the men and the women, with each group taking a different trail. In Force of Nature, a group of employees has gone on a team-building retreat, backpacking for a few days. In The Dry, the backstory is about Aaron’s own history, so he does technically know more than the reader, but at the same time the reader slowly realizes how events that happen to us when we are in our mid-teens may not look the same when we revisit them as adults, so even Aaron is learning new pieces of his own past. In both cases, the reader is receiving snippets of the back story, while Aaron is making discoveries in the present. The pacing in both books is absolutely spot on. And the only reason Aaron has returned for the funeral is because Luke’s father sent Aaron a note, telling him he had to be at the funeral, because Aaron lied, and Luke lied. The reason Luke is dead is because Luke killed his wife, son, and himself. The reason for his visit is to attend the funeral of his best friend growing up, Luke.

In The Dry, he’s returned to his hometown for the first time since they moved away when he was teen. However, unlike the traditional MC of a detective novel, Falk’s job actually has to do with tracing money – money laundering, embezzling, and the like. The main character is a law enforcement officer named Aaron Falk. I thoroughly enjoyed both of these stories, so I’m hoping that Harper has some more adventures for Aaron Falk up her sleeve. As usual, I’m several years behind, but, as frequently happens, it has weirdly worked in my favor as I was able to dive directly into the sequel, Force of Nature. I feel like when The Dry first came out, I saw it on EVERYONE’S blogs. The Aroma of Books //Rants//Raves//Reviews// Pargeter, Edith (also writing as Ellis Peters).Mertz, Barbara (also writing as Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels).Christie, Agatha (also writing as Mary Westmacott).Children’s History: Landmark, Signature Biographies, and We Were There.#BookSpin & #BookSpinBingo (Litsy Challenge).

Aaron falk the dry