Nevada Barr

All of you naysayers just don't want to accept the truth - humans are a failed species. You whiny people are the reason monsters like this get away with this type of thing - - you CHOOSE TO IGNORE THE TRUTH. This sort of thing --- IT IS YOUR FAULT FOR IGNORING IT! Nevada Barr does an EXCEPTIONAL job of telling the truth about horrors that are the horrible, devastating truth. If you can't stand it? Do something about it. Find these people. Kill them. They don't deserve to live.

Ms Barr has show more taken on a horrific subject and made it real. The people that really disturb me? The blind idiots who gave the book a bad review. This is a desperately important issue, one that is ignored, denied, and swept under the rug by people who would just as soon pretend it doesn't happen. If you stick your fingers in your ears and hum really loud, it will just all go away, right? R i i i i g h t......

I had a minister tell me once upon a time that things like this simply didn't happen - that humans were too "Godly" for this to ever happen, and that I was a monster for saying it did. Yes, and Santa comes down the chimney, the Tooth Fairy delivers quarters, and the man with the van really only wants to give your child a piece of candy - he never would really hurt a fly, right? Yes, dear morons, it happens, and No, it isn't a 'curable disability' it is a monstrous, horrific twist to the psyche that is incurable, other than with a needle in the arm or in "Old Sparky" (too good a fate) or by burning slowly at a rotisserie operated stake (much more like it).

Thank you, thank you, Ms Barr, for writing "Burn". Yes, the reviews of many are stupid, simplistic, blind and cruel. I wonder what these same people would say if it were THEIR children who were taken and used in this manner?

Ms Barr does an exceptional job of pulling off the cover of banality and blindness and writing a book which brings these horrors to life. To say true, I had sort of gotten bored with Anna. As she has gotten older, she has gotten stodgy and dull (sort of like the rest of us). None of her stories, in my estimation, really addressed anything truly important any longer. It was more like running around telling you about state parks and having fights. Apparently, Ms Barr was a bit bored with Anna herself, and decided to do something deeply worthwhile with her character. Hooray for her! The book is absolutely fantastic, and, hopefully, will bring attention to an issue that Americans have ignored for far too long.
If the book opens the eyes of only a few, it will be worth the effort she put into writing a deep, intelligent, and worthwhile book.

What if it were YOUR child? show less

I found this a whole lot of fun. You need to go into it anticipating less Anna Pigeon and more Amelia Peabody. (Hmmm.... I didn't think of the symmetry of the A.P. initials when I searched for an appropriate contrasting character to Anna. Cosmic forces at work? Rose might think so.)

The characters are all entertaining - I quickly fell in love with Rose and her feisty spirit. The plot moves along briskly, and I was sorry when the book ended.

I've been reading some fairly serious non-fiction show more lately and it was refreshing to indulge myself in a book that was breezy and well written, and repeatedly had me grinning. Oh, and the narrator of the audio version matched the tone of the book perfectly. show less

'Ill Wind‘ is the third mystery featuring Law Enforcement Park Ranger, Anna Pigeon. In the first book, 'Track Of The Cat' she was working in the heat of the Guadalupe Mountains National Park in West Texas. In the second book 'A Superior Death' she was working on and under the water in Isle Royale National Park on the coast of Lake Superior. This time she’s working in almost museum-like atmosphere of the Mesa Verde National Park amongst the elaborate cave dwellings that the Anasazi lived show more in for 700 years before apparently abandoning them for reasons that are still hotly debated.

Wherever Anna works, you know somebody will wind up dead and she will have to risk life and limb to discover who the killer is. I have no problem with the formula as, Nevada Barr always brings whatever Park Anna is working in alive and gives me an insider's view of how the Park Service works and she also keeps deepening my understanding of Anna Pigeon, a woman whom I'm enjoying getting to know.

I visited the Mesa Verde National Park around the time this novel was published, so Nevada Barr's descriptions of the place revived some memories for me..

I wouldn't have thought of Mesa Verde as a dangerous place to be either a Ranger or a visitor but Nevada Barr has produced a mystery that plausibly places everyone at risk. It's a solid mystery that was made livlier by Barr's decision to bring back the Columbo-like FBI agent that Anna worked with in the last book, ‘A Superior Death‘.

I enjoyed the mystery, especially the action-packed conclusion but it was the continuing development of Anna’s character that made the book for me. I loved Anna’s very human reaction to the death of a friend. She’s not hard-boiled although she is pragmatic, sceptical, has low inclusion needs and has little time for social niceties. As a widow, she’s too well acquainted with grief and that’s what surfaces when she’s confronted with a friend’s corpse. She doesn’t flip into detective mode, She drags herself through the crime scene mechanics and then gets blackout drunk.

I admire the way Nevada Barr controls the pace of her novels. The beginning gets me involved with the place and with the changes in Anna's life while introducing key characters. The middle sets up the mystery and has Anna trying to pull things together. The last third of book is action-packed and suspenseful,. This isn't the kind of book where the cleverer-than-everyone-else detective gathers the suspects in a room and displas their deductive brilliance. This is the kind of book that keeps you guessing almost until the end and culminates in violent confrontations that put Anna at risk.

I had a lot of fun with the book and I’m already looking forward to reading the next book. ‘Firestorm‘. set in northern California in the winter. show less

Ooof. This one was so well done that it was nearly impossible for me to read parts of it, averse as I am to the idea of being under water, or way out on open water. NPS Ranger Anna Pigeon has been transferred out of the desert to the Isle Royale park on upper Lake Superior. She's not real happy about it, missing the clean dry heat and fog-free environment of her previous assignment. But she's got the hang of small boats, is certified to dive, and finds many aspects of the job personally, if show more not financially, rewarding. Her co-workers, both permanent and seasonal, are a motley assortment of competence, quirkiness and stupidity. She suspects some of them are up to unethical, if not criminal pursuits. When the body of one of the best professional divers on the lake is found drowned without gear, and oddly dressed at that, on an old shipwreck, her suspicions are confirmed, but nothing, from the water down there, to the air above, and many actions taking place in between, is clear. Lots of good bits of business in this one, offbeat dark-ish humor, and some near-deadly underwater action (which I truly had to force myself to read without skimming). Can't wait to see where Anna finds herself next. show less