Nevada Barr

a wilderness for Halloween Bingo when I came acroos 'Track Of The Cat' in my Kindle TBR. I bought it to replace my 1990s paperback copy that I released into the wild a while ago because the text was too small for me to read. My memory of the book has faded over the decades since I read it so the quality and tone of the opening paragraphs caught me by surprise:

“There hadn’t been a god for many years. Not the nightgownclad patriarch of Sunday school coloring books; not the sensitive young show more man with the inevitable auburn ringlets Anna had stared through in the stained-glass windows at Mass; not the many-armed and many-faceted deities of the Bhagavad Gita that she’d worshipped alongside hashish and Dustin Hoffman in her college days. Even the short but gratifying parade of earth goddesses that had taken her to their ample bosoms in her early thirties had gone, though she remembered them with more kindness than the rest.

God was dead. Let Him rest in peace. Now, finally, the earth was hers with no taint of Heaven."

Reading this made me want to get to know Anna Pigeon. Over the next 167 pages, I came to like her a lot. Anna is a great character - a little odd - not always comfortable with herself - not always sure that she's sane - a widow - an escapee from Manhattan sophistication to the unfiltered nature of the hight country - brave - curious about everything except the people around her - still mourning her husband - unwilling to commit to a new lover, connected to the world beyond the Park on via herManhattan-based high-priced psychiatrist sister - bad at making friends but good at getting answers to difficult questions.

The plot was mainly a framework for getting to know Anna and to share her love for the harsh beauty of the Guadalupe Mountains National Park in West Texas. I've never been to that part of Texas but I love desert landscapes and it was a pleasure to spend time in this one.

Although Anna is a Law Enforement Park Ranger, her investigations into the death of a fellow ranger who is deamed to have been killed by a mountain lion is an off-the-books informal affair. I loved that Anna knows that she doesn't have the skills or experience to carry out this kind of investigation but goes ahead anyway. Anna investigates with self-mocking humour and a need to know the truth. That she started her investigation by telling her boss: 'The lion didn't do it." made me smile.

I hadn't expected much of the plot but, by the second half of the book, I was quite engaged with it, even though I had no idea who the killer was. The ending was inspired, unexpected, tense and easy to believe in.

I'm hungry for more now, so it's comforting to know that there are eighteen more books in the series. I'm going to allow myself one a month until either I'm done or I lose interest. I've already added the next book, 'A Superior Death' set in Isle Royale National Park on the coast of Lake Superior, to my shelves. show less

OK, so I’m a little late to the party on this author; I can’t speak to Nevada Barr’s entire body of work, but Track of the Cat is quite the mystery debut.

Ms. Barr uses language wisely; her lyrical descriptions of the West Texas desert – in the heat of day, at sunset, at moonrise – are the only passages in which she is extravagant with her words. Sky, trees, animal sounds, and scents are explored as Park Ranger and Law Enforcement Officer Anna Pigeon, a transplanted New York widow, show more takes it upon herself to find out what killed her fellow Rangers after finding their bodies in Guadalupe Mountains National Park.

The pacing is perfect, and ends in a confrontation with one of the most despicable criminals I’ve ever read – which made the ending so satisfying. There are one or two plot holes, including a dinner party that just dropped out of the sky with either no prior mention or a mention so far back in the narrative that it was camouflaged. Without this confusing event, I would be reviewing a five star book. I took away a half-star, but I will be reading more in this series. Anna Pigeon is one of the most intriguing protagonists I’ve met in a mystery series, and I can’t wait to see where she goes. I did guess the killer, but the book is so beautifully crafted overall that I don’t count this against the author.

Other reviewers have classified this as a cozy mystery, but I disagree. Anna is too much of a badass, and I can’t reconcile the unforgiving desert landscape with tea, humor, or any of the other cozy hallmarks. Neither is it a police procedural; Anna operates in the margins of the law, and without the support of her department. I guess I’ll just call it a mystery series; maybe it’s got a sub-genre of its own. Desert Mystery?

Regardless, this is a book to be savored. Take your time as you visit the desert with Anna. Be careful on the trail. show less

Anna Pigeon is anti-social; her job as NPS ranger has suited her well in her previous two assignments, in National Parks where the primary objective was to protect the water, the land and its wild inhabitants. But now, she is posted to Colorado's Mesa Verde, where the ancient ruins mysteriously abandoned by the lost Anasazi civilization draw crowds of tourists, and where Anna is obliged to live in dormitory-style housing with a group of younger seasonal employees whose late-into-the-night show more parties are not conducive to peace or privacy. Anna is still mourning her long-dead husband, but finds herself attracted to a married ranger with a lot of baggage. The universe gets up to its usual tricks, people turn up dead, evil spirits may be in the mist, and Anna charges head-long into danger to seek the truth and make things right. She even takes a step toward facing her own demons. No spoiler here---she lives to fight another day.
R & R fiction at its best. 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