Ill Wind

'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 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 show more 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

The Anna Pigeon series is addictive. I even convinced my husband to read it. I love Anna’s flaws and peccadillos. In this book she is a Ranger in the Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. There’s a lot of history about the original people of this historic site. It is the largest archeological preserve in the US beginning from as early as 7500 BC. I love reading about the history of an area as much as I love the mystery that Nevada Barr creates in these iconic sites. Anna finds herself in the middle of not one, but two domestic disputes which are going to tax her physically as well as mentally. She’s also in the middle of what could be a huge environmental hotspot. Anna finds herself reexamining her own history and life choices. show more Her sister Molly helps her through the rough spots as usual. I love the characters in these books. Why did I wait so long to get back to this wonderful series? 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 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 show more 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

This time we find ranger Anna Pigeon in Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. I wasn't far into it when I started hunting for photos of the park and making tentative plans to visit. Barr does an excellent job of presenting the scene and providing small and large details so we get the feel of the place almost intimately.

Anna is loving being back in the desert, although a very different desert from her first posting, when her enjoyment is shattered by mysterious illnesses and death. Mesa Verde is at a high elevation, which can be tricky for asthmatics, but even so the breathing problems facing some tourists seem greater than can be explained that way. Then a friend is murdered. Anna takes it personally.

Again sneaking out at all hours and show more finding her way to strange scenes, Anna will not let go until she is either stopped or she solves the case.

I really enjoy the locations of these mysteries, and I enjoy Anna. A loner from way back, Anna loosens up reluctantly, but that doesn't mean she doesn't care about others. She is particularly attached to her older sister Molly and calls her when she can. She is also developing deeper feelings for an FBI agent she met on Isle Royale. show less

Not one of her best, but since I was at Mesa Verde last month, I could envision the places she was describing.KIRKUS REVIEWAs historians and contractors slug it out over replacing the ancient waterlines in Mesa Verde National Park, noncombatant park ranger Anna Pigeon battles a demon of her own: her growing attraction to Stacy Meyers, a law-enforcement temp unhappily married (what did he and Rose Meyers ever see in each other, anyway?) and burdened with a special-needs stepchild. Soon enough, though, there are more immediate problems: contractor Ted Greeley's hiring of Tom Silva, estranged husband of park superintendent's secretary Patsy Silva, who immediately feels she's being harassed by her obsessive ex; a midnight sabotage attempt show more on Greeley's excavation equipment; a nip-and-tuck airlift of an asthmatic girl who collapses in the Cliff Palace; Stacy's strangely dissociated behavior during the rescue; and finally the eerie discovery of Stacy's corpse, neatly laid out on the fire-pit floor of the Cliff Palace without a mark to indicate how he died. Whodunit, and why, and how? Not as intense or as ingenious as A Superior Death (1994), and this time Anna's struggles with alcoholism and the continuing grief of widowhood eclipse the more routine intrigues of the plot. But the supporting characters have stubborn lives of their own -- you never get the sense that they've spent their whole lives waiting to be suspects in a murder case -- and Barr's sense of place is as wondrous as ever. show less

3.5***

Book #3 in the Anna Pigeon series, has the national park ranger assigned to Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. Unlike her previous posts, Mesa Verde is less about the natural beauty and outdoor majesty, and more focused on the archeological interest in the ruins of the Anasazi cliff dwellings. Anna has to deal with controversy surrounding construction of a badly needed upgraded water system, an ex-husband who is stalking and threatening the park superintendant’s secretary, reported sightings of mystic phenomenon, and several medical emergencies. When a child dies the new-age proponents attribute it to the upset spirits – Chindi – and predict things “will happen” with the summer solstice. But Anna is convinced that the show more real culprits are human.

I’ve only discovered this series in the last year or so and I’m really enjoying them. Anna Pigeon is a great character – intelligent, mature, physically fit and tenacious. She is struggling with her emotions, having never really gotten over the accidental death of her husband a decade or so previously. She shows her vulnerability first in a just-beginning flirtation with a fellow ranger, and later in a renewed interest in FBI agent Frederick Stanton. In general, however, her relationships with the various women she encounters are stronger than with any of the men. I particularly liked how Barr portrayed Anna’s interactions with the little girl Bella.

The plot was a little slow to take off in this book (the murder doesn’t happen until about page 100), but the basic premise is one that would take a while to unfold, so this slow reveal served the story. There were many characters (i.e. suspects) and I was really kept guessing right up to the time that Anna unveiled the perpetrator.

On the whole, this is a very satisfying mystery read. show less

Although the setting was fascinating with the Anasazi ruins, the plot of this one was not that engaging.