Once again, the plot dispatches him to a picturesque location directly linked with a long-ago personal trauma (this is a narrative card you can play only a certain number of times, which may explain why Harper has opted to wrap up her series after book three).

Here it’s the fictional Giralang Ranges, a few hours out of Melbourne, where the search is under way for a woman who’s failed to return from a corporate hiking retreat.

Foul play seems possible, especially given that the woman in question, Alice Russell (Anna Torv), has been serving as an informant to Aaron and his partner Carmen (Jacqueline McKenzie), who are working on a case involving money laundering at her firm. Another subplot involves a serial killer once active in the region, whose victims are likely still buried somewhere out in the bush.

In short, there’s a lot going on: not too much for a 300-page novel, but it’s another matter for Connolly to squish it all into two hours. The job requires several sets of flashbacks: the most compelling thread is the hiking expedition where tensions rise between Alice and others in her all-female group, a scenario that could have been a movie by itself. Otherwise, there’s a lot of Aaron trudging round questioning people, weighed down by a sense of his responsibility for Alice’s fate.

The challenge of filming this kind of detective story lies in ensuring every scene is sufficiently charged with subtext to qualify as a genuine dramatic encounter, not just a means to advance the plot. That doesn’t always happen in Force of Nature, which even at its best isn’t far from the conventional rhythms of TV.

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Still, some of the veterans in the cast supply expert sketches of recognisable Australian types, notably Deborra-Lee Furness as Alice’s crusty, entitled but not entirely unsympathetic boss; Richard Roxburgh as her smirking husband plays it broader than anyone else, but makes an effective counter to Bana’s restraint.

In the end, the clumsy title feels like a symptom of a broader problem of definition. Beyond the literal solution to the mystery, what is Force of Nature: The Dry 2 supposed to be about? It would be easy to say the rainforest is the real protagonist, looming over the whole story, making human conflicts look trivial by comparison. But the trees aren’t giving up their secrets.

Force of Nature: The Dry 2 is released in cinemas on February 8.