Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon

Track of the Cat

Anna Pigeon fled the turmoil of New York to become a national park ranger, only to discover she hasn't escaped murder and violence. When a colleague is killed, claw marks on the victim's throat and paw prints around the body are too perfect to be those of an alleged killer mountain lion.

This was not the first Anna Pigeon book I read, but after discovering her as an author, I went back and read all the books in order.

I lived in Texas for 15+ years and loved the West/North Texas area. This (except for the tarantula) was a refreshing visit west, with a good story introducing likeable characters into the mix. So not to introduce any spoilers, reviewing this book any further is un-advisable. Please go to the other reviews.

Elynor Vine Review

A Superior Death

Park ranger Anna Pigeon proves she's much more than a regional specialist when she's reassigned to the frigid North Shore of Lake Superior and hears two divers' tales of finding six bodies in the Kamloops, a sunken 1927 wreck where there are supposed to be only five corpses. Who could've killed dive concessionaire Denny Castle on his honeymoon night--and what was he doing down there anyway? The final revelation of culprit and motive will surprise all. A crackling good mystery, fleshed out by a detective and a supporting cast far more human than they need to be.

I've personally never gone scuba diving but Anna's phobia was practically contagious. Barr's descriptions of the peace was very calming, but as I come from a more southern clime, I don't think I could live in such a cold place. And don't even get me started on the insect problem!

Ill Wind

Anna Pigeon, a park ranger at Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park, finds fellow park ranger dead. Murder? Possibly, but who and why? When the husband of another park employee is killed in a suspicious car wreck, the case takes on broader implications. Through it all, Anna struggles with her middle-aged angst, her alcoholism, and her loneliness, drawing support from long-distance calls to her sister. Anna is a flawed but admirable woman struggling daily to determine her values and her value in a harsh world.

I liked this one a lot. Her descriptions of Piedmont make me miss my CAT! (sob quietly) I left her in Texas when I left the country and she's since died...

The imagery in this of the mystery was truly eerie and it was nice to see another recurring character in Frederick the Fed.

Firestorm

A raging fire in a national park seems an unlikely setting for a murder, but that's exactly the circumstances that crime- fighting park ranger and medic Anna Pigeon confronts in this mystery thriller. A suspicious fire breaks loose in Northern California's Lassen Volcanic Park and Anna assists in battling the blaze and treating the wounds of other fire fighters. As if that's not enough, Pigeon finds herself without food and water trapped with a group of fire fighters, one of whom is a murderer. She tries to figure out who the culprit is before he, or the weather, strikes again.

This is one of my favorite and FAST Paced. The movie of the same name was *different* but some of the actors now wear the faces of those characters. Sad huh? Nice visit from Frederick the Fed, again.

Endangered Species

In the midst of a dangerously dry season, national park ranger Anna Pigeon has been posted to Cumberland Island off the Georgia coast for a monotonous, twenty-one day fire watch. But her boredom is short-lived, for this remote and marshy place is breeding ground for more than just the imperiled Loggerhead turtle; it also spawns eccentricity and secrets, greed, suspicion. . .and murder.

This is actually my least favorite... I've re-read the entire series except this one... I can't get back into the book...

Blind Descent

Very early in Blind Descent Anna's courage is put to an even greater test when she learns that a woman seriously injured while exploring a cave next door to New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns is a friend who has requested Pigeon's help in getting her out. Pushing aside her fears, Pigeon takes the plunge, leading readers through a truly harrowing series of tight squeezes. Back above ground, Anna quickly gets involved in two possibly linked murders and becomes a rifleman's target. As we share the progress of her investigation, a sneaky suspicion starts to grow of possible suspects within the small community of spelunkers and National Park Service bureaucrats.

Another phobia for Anna: spelunking! It's really just an extension of her claustrophobia, but she works through it for this adventure. Evelyn Vaughn's Buried Secrets is one of the few other books that I've read with such a good portrayal of a phobia I don't even share. Now spiders or needles... I can relate!

Liberty Falling

Staying with fellow ranger Patsy Silva in order to be close to her psychiatrist sister Molly, hospitalized at Columbia Presbyterian in New York City, Anna thinks her biggest headach will be Molly's grave illness. But darker trouble is already brewing. An unidentified 14-year-old girl who jumped to her death from the parapet around the statue's base has sent James Patchett, the guard who was pursuing her, into deep depression. Why was the girl more willing to die than to have Patch, who thought she was a pickpocket, catch her? Why has her backpack disappeared? And why hasn't anyone claimed her body? As Molly Pigeon shuttles in and out of Intensive Care, pausing only long enough to encourage Anna's romance with surgeon David Madison, more casualties pile up on Liberty Island, including two who leave behind cryptic messages that Anna's convinced would tie half a dozen mysterious portents together if only she were wise enough to decipher them.

Anna at the Statue of Liberty, Frederick the Fed is there, too! Molly sick, Anna still finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery, despite blooming romance, strange romance with FtF and Molly in the hospital.

Deep South

A promotion forces Anna Pigeon to head to the lush, humid warmth of the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi/Tennessee. But even though the people and places are different, Anna still finds herself embroiled in solving a deadly crime that is rooted in the land and history around her. Barr effectively captures the beauty and menace of nature below the Mason Dixon Line and provides thoughtful insights into teens, race, and the Civil War.

I'll have to re-read this... it didn't last long enough to really sink in :-)

Blood Lure

Anna has been assigned to work temporarily in Montana's Glacier National Park and learns how to do DNA studies on wildlife by working with a biologist, Joan, on a study of grizzly bears. Anna, Joan and a young, inexperienced volunteer, Rory, are sent out into the park's wilderness areas to set lures for the grizzlies. In their remote campsite one night, Anna and Joan amazingly survive a grizzly bear attack on their tents unscathed, only to find that Rory has gone missing. As park rangers and rescue teams hike the mountainous park looking for the missing teenager, they find instead the dead body of a woman whose face has been horribly mutilated. Rory is an obvious suspect, as is the bear who attacked the camp.

I kinda liked the grizzly and was disappointed when I found out "who" the culprit(s) was/were.

Hunting Season

When the body of Doyce Barnett turns up in unsavory circumstances in Mississippi's Natchez Trace National Park, district ranger Anna Pigeon finds her investigation stymied at every turn. The dead man's brother, an undertaker with a secret that's been kept by three generations of his family, will do anything to protect it, even if his cover-up puts Anna's life in danger. Her own deputy, jealous because she got the job he wanted, seems to be sabotaging her case in order to advance his political ambitions. A bunch of Mississippi good old boys who've been poaching on park territory are gunning for her, and something strange is going on in a slave cemetery that's also in her bailiwick.

I got the spider-crawlies as she described the humid Natchez Trace forest at night! I like Paul better than Frederick the Fed!

Flashback

When Anna Pigeon flees a marriage proposal for ranger service on Garden Key in Dry Tortugas National Park, she quickly becomes ensnared in one life-threatening situation after another. And she uncovers a mystery concerning alleged Lincoln assassination conspirator Dr. Samuel Mudd interweaves with current crimes. Anna finds some letters tha relate a story of intrigue and murder and things get Flashback-happy as the past and present interweave in a suspenseful mosaic of tales.

I got lost and felt like poor Anna, losing track of time -- in the truest sense of the word.

High Country

When four young employees of Yosemite National Park disappear, ranger Anna Pigeon goes undercover as a waitress at the Ahwahnee Lodge to investigate. Living in the staff dorm, she soon discovers there's a connection between at least one of the missing girls, a crashed plane containing a fortune in drugs, and the outsiders who've moved into the tent cabin last occupied by a skilled climber who's also among the disappeared. The first attempt on her life doesn't scare her away, but the second is nearly fatal, and Anna's harrowing escape keeps the tension ratcheted up.

I liked this one. It was a true mystery and I didn't figure it out ahead of time.

Hard Truth

Just three days after her wedding to Sherrif Paul Davidson, Anna Pigeon moves from Mississippi to Colorado to assume her new post as district ranger at Rocky Mountain National Park, where three girls have disappeard during a religious retreat. Two of the children reappear a month later, clad only in filthy underwear and claiming to remember nothing of the intervening weeks. The girls are frightened and traumatized, but they forge a bond with the campers who discover them--a wheelchair-bound paraplegic and her elderly aunt.

With the reappearance of the children comes an odd and unsettling presence in the park, a sense of disembodied evil and unspeakable terrors: small animals are found mercilessly slaughtered, and a sinister force seems to still control the girls. As Anna investigates, she finds herself caught up in the mchinations of a paranoid religious sect bent on protecting its secrets and keeping the girls sequestered from law enforcement and psychiatric help.

Following the trail of the many suspects, especially that of the cult's intense youth-group leader, Anna comes to find the force agains which the children's minds have been broken. This evil has the eyes of a visionary and the soul of the devil. Anna will discover the truth -- even if it kills her.

I really liked Heath and hope to heck there are more tales with her.

Winter Study

It is January, and Park Ranger Anna Pigeon is sent to Isle Royale in Lake Superior to learn about managing and understanding wolves, as her home base of Rocky Mountain National Park might soon have its own pack of the magnificent, much-maligned animals. She's lodging in the island's bunkhouse with the famed wolf study team, along with two scientists from Homeland Security, who are assessing the study with an eye to opening the park in the winters--an act that would effectively bring an end to the fifty-year project--so that the area can be manned to secure the scrap of border with Canada.

Soon after Anna's arrival, the wolf packs under observation begin to behave in peculiar ways. Giant wolf prints are found, and Anna spies the form of a great wolf from a surveillance plane. The discovery of wolf scat containing alien DNA leads the group to believe that perhaps a wolf/dog hybrid has been introduced to the island. When a female member of the team is savaged, Anna is convinced she is being stalked, and what was once a beautiful, idyllic refuge becomes a place of unnatural occurrences and danger beyond the ordinary. Alone on an island without electricity or running water, with temperatures hovering around zero both day and night, Anna fights not only for the wolves but for her own survival as well.

I'd rather NOT be in a place like that (brrr), but if I were I'd rather be alone than with the company Anna's joined on this adventure!

Borderline

Drained and haunted by the killings on Isle Royale, diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and on administrative leave by order of her superintendent--the one bright spot in Anna's life is Paul, her husband of less than a year. Hoping the warmth and the adventure of a raft trip in Big Bend National Park will lift her spirits, Paul takes Anna to southwestern Texas, where the sun is hot and the Rio Grande is running high. The sheer beauty of the Chihuahuan Desert and the power of the river work their magic--until the raft is lost in the rapids and a young college student makes a grisly discovery. Hair and arms tangled in the downed branches between two boulders, more dead than alive, is a pregnant woman.

Nature, it turns out, isn't the only one who wants to see the woman and her baby dead.

Instead of the soul-soothing experience she'd longed for, Anna finds herself sucked into a labyrinth of intrigue that leads from the Mexican desert to the steps of the Governor's Mansion in Austin.

Burn

Anna Pigeon, a Ranger with the National Park Service, is on administrative leave from her job as she recovers from the traumas of the past couple months--while the physical wounds have healed, the emotional ones are still healing. With her new husband busy and back at work, Anna decides to go stay with an old friend from the Park Service, Geneva, who works as a singer at the New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park.

Anna isn't in town long before she crosses paths with a tenant of Geneva's, a creepy guy named Jordan. She discovers what seems to be an attempt to place a curse on her--a gruesomely killed pigeon marked with runic symbols--and begins slowly to find traces of very dark doings in the heart of post-Katrina New Orleans. Tied up in all of this evil magic are Jordan, who is not at all what he appears to be; a fugitive mother accused of killing husband and daughters in a fire; and faint whispers of unpleasant goings-on in the heart of the slowly recovering city.

Now it will take all of Anna's skills learned in the untamed outdoors to navigate the urban jungle in which she finds herself, to uncover the threads that connect these seemingly disparate people, and to rescue the most vulnerable of creatures from the most savage of animals.