Hard Truth

Anna Pigeon is a fascinating character--a 50 something Park Ranger, who's in great shape, has spent her life outdoors, but is still concerned enough to take care of her skin! A role model for us elder ladies!

In this adventure, she's recently married but has left her new husband back in New Orleans when the call came to take this post in Rocky Mountain National Park. It appears to be a good career step and they agree to take one year to decide whose career will be the one driving where the couple will ultimately live. I sense plenty of room for future tension in that aspect.

When Anna arrives at her new post, she is briefed on an ongoing case of three missing girls from some sort of church campout. When two of those girls emerge from the show more woods dehydrated, filthy, almost naked, and suffering from 'amnesia' about what happened to them and where they've been for the past two weeks, Anna is skeptical. Church and family elders do not want to pursue the adventure, and if it weren't for the fact that one of the girls is still missing, would not allow any questioning at all.

Add to this mix the fact that the two girls were discovered by a young paraplegic in a wheelchair who is camping in the park with her 80 year old auntie who happens to be a physician, and you have a delicious mix of motivations and characters. This one has a great plot, lots of suspects - not too many too track of though--a gorgeous setting which Barr describes well, and some well developed characters.

Although I have not read the previous 12 in the series, I had no trouble following with the limited backfill. While I am curious about some of the previous adventures (who the husband is and how they met for instance), the lack of knowledge did not detract from my enjoyment of this story. The plot makes a very steady climb to an especially chilling and thrilling climax. I don't usually like "scary in the dark woods" kinds of stories, but I found this one quite believable and was sufficiently grabbed that I had to stay up long past my bedtime to finish it. It is a true cliff hangar. (Read the story and you'll see that is no pun.) show less

Not the worst Anna Pigeon, but certainly not the best. Anna sleuthing and sleuthing and sleuthing around in the dark for no really good reason other than to be sleuthing, but Nevada Barr sums it up best:

"Worse: a fool, a mark, a victim."

Fool and mark are correct, but she's a victim of her own idiocy in this book.

"...through her blind dim-wittedness she'd gotten them into this mess."

"Mess" is a bit of an understatement; kind of like saying detonating an atomic bomb leaves a bit of a mess, a tiny bit of destruction.

The Pigeon doesn't have to be a superhero, but a complete and total nitwit is seriously unbecoming. Crimes shouldn't be solved by dumb luck alone; there should be at least a modicum of intelligence behind the crime fighting.

Not show more to give too much away, but everyone is a suspect except, you know, the actual suspect.

There was a lot going on in this book, and ultimately it was way too much. Interesting having a paraplegic character, and how she interacted with her newfound life in a wheelchair as well as the immediate hurdles. About a third of the way through, I thought that the book took a turn for the better with the introduction of the "cherry cordial," but my newfound appreciation and hope for better only lasted a few pages.

Let's just say that when an author decides that the main character is going to bust into a gathering of mob bosses or the main hideout of a drug cartel without any backup or telling anyone where they are going or without any weapons whatsoever (and for some unknown reason many, many writers do), because the good guy or gal is so damn good, what could possible go wrong... well, except for every last thing. In those cases (again way, way, way too many), my interest in said story becomes challenged; I lose interest, and ultimately I cannot vouch for the book in the end. Hard Truth is that story. It's an okay read if you are an Anna Pigeon fan, but by the end I had to admit that it was really lame. show less

I think Nevada Barr is a talented writer. However, what I thought would be a low-key and pleasant mystery became unbelievably gruesome and harrowing. The crime in this book is so creepy, it has haunted me for fifteen years. I'm good with Stephen King but this was way too dark for me.

This book also has a strong ableist slant (one of the main characters is paraplegic, and is constantly described as wheelchair-bound, a cripple, and as inspirational or an object of pity.) Sorry to be so negative, but I would probably check out one of this author's twenty-plus other books, unless this sounds like exactly what you've been looking for.

Book 13 of Anna Pigeon. Takes place in Rocky Mountain National Park. Heath, a recent climbing-fall victim who is wheelchair bound, finds two of three girls who have been missing for over 6 weeks. I liked how anti-religion this book was. The crime is a lot more unpleasant than in other books. Part of the story is told from Heath's perspective which I enjoyed; feelings did not get in the way of plot progression too much. Didn't like how unlikely I thought it was that the perpetrator would have gotten away with it for as long as they did. Also thought their motivation was very dubious.

I first became acquainted with Nevada Barr and her National Parks Ranger sleuth Anna Pigeon in 2001. Ms Barr's book Blood Lure was set in Glacier National Park (the one that shares a border with Canada's Waterton Lakes National Park) which was a place I had visited. I really enjoyed it and so I set my sights on reading all the ones that came before and then catching up to date. With this book I have read all the books that were published up to 2010 and now I have to find the last three.

This book is set in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado which is a beautiful park that I have visited several times. It's a good thing that this book is fiction because if the horrible things that Anna Pigeon encounters were real probably no-one show more would want to visit. Anna has just taken a new job as a district ranger in the park and she is still getting up to speed on what she needs to know. She gets a call that takes her out to a campground set aside for disabled campers. There she finds Heath, a woman confined to a wheelchair after falling in a mountain climbing accident, and her aunt Gwen as well as two emaciated and filthy young girls. Heath tells how the girls emerged from the woods dressed in only underwear with no shoes just after her wheelchair had tipped over on a path near her camp site. They have not talked very much but Anna and the other park staff know that they are two of three girls that disappeared some weeks earlier while on a camping trip with their church group. There are many questions to be answered including where were they kept and who by and where is the missing girl. Those questions take a long time to answer partly because the girls claim they don't remember but mostly because the girls are part of a Mormon religious community that refuses to have them seen by any trauma specialists. The only hope for recovering information lies with Heath's close relationship with one of the girls, Beth; Beth clung so closely to Heath that Heath calls her the limpet. Meanwhile Anna is trying to learn the trails and campgrounds in her district and she also hopes she might find the missing girl. Travelling by herself as she does it is little wonder that she gets into some dangerous situations. And it appears that there is a psychopath loose in the park and Anna has to try to stop him/her.

Gripping story which I recommend to anyone wanting to read something a little different from your usual mystery. show less

Full props to Nevada Barr. The first Anna Pigeon novel, Track of the Cat, was a wonderfully descriptive story in a state park with some great characters and a good mystery. I assumed that she'd take that nice formula and spin it out into a good series of books, and that theory was borne out by the second story I read.

Then I got this book. Same Anna, same national parks, but this isn't a nice little mystery. It's a hideous psychological thriller featuring some of the most twisted villains I've ever had the pleasure to read about. Reminds me a bit of Elizabeth George or Ted Decker, and it's kind of nauseating just wondering what kind of mind could even come up with characters like these.

The other books in the series I've read I'd be happy show more to recommend to an Agatha Christie fan. The psychological darkness in this one makes it less appropriate for those genteel folks, but the writing continues to be terrific, and Barr manages to pull her characters and settings right out of their comfort mystery zone and into this blacker one. Quite a feat. show less

Hard Truth (2005) (Anna Pigeon #13) by Nevada Barr. Nevada Barr’s tough as an oak detective/national park ranger Anna Pigeon is back, just now working in the Rocky Mountain National Park. She leaves her new husband behind in Mississippi to take a promotion to the Rockies. Her introduction to the park is a catch-up history of the search for three missing girls. A fundamentalist church group was doing a spiritual ministry for several days in the park. A young preacher and another were leading the group of teen and tween girls when most returned to their church.
The girls were separated from the youth minister almost a month before and the search has petered out when Anna arrives. Then two of the girls wander into the camp of a retired show more doctor and her wheelchair bound niece named Heath. They manage to calm the traumatized pair until the park rangers and EMTs can be notified.
Thus begins Anna’s investigation. As you might know from her past adventures, Anna is going to become a detective and work on solving this case. Anna Pigeon is one of the better characters in the role of sleuth, doing what is necessary to find the truth and stop the evil. And there is plenty of evil here. A sociopath is stalking the park with the intent of creating others in it’s image.
Heath, only recently confined to the wheelchair after a horrible ice climbing accident, is faced with her own troubles, hating the loss of her rock/ice climbing lifestyle. She is fighting all her own demons and is compelled to try and help the two girls who have escaped the clutches of evil only to go back to the clutches of their church.
This is yet another look inside the minds of the main characters, a fascinating study of one person trying to find herself in a new world while another is trying to distort that same world for their own maniacal ends. Anna, as usual, gets abused along the way, but no more or less than a male character in the same situation. I’m not keen on the female as abuse victim, but she does give as well as she gets. I do feel bad for the girls,
This is yet another tour into our friendly, safe National Park system. Hard Truth is something of a guidebook, just like all the Anna Pigeon novels. I like finding the novel that corresponds with my next wildlife outing as not only is it going to be a good read but will offer information about the park that is veery entertaining and informative.
And I really liked Ms. Barr’s book featuring the Dry Tortugas, another favorite. show less