Gale Force

Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Salt Flat, Texas	The memory of violence and loss drove Anna Pigeon from the city to seek peace in the Southwestern wilderness. Now a ranger in America's national parks, Anna is at one with nature and its serene, unspoiled majesty. But the brutal death of a fellow ranger in the remote West Texas backcountry -- presumably by mountain lion attack-looks suspiciously like murder to Anna. And her unauthorized investigation into the tragedy is placing her squarely in harm's way. For a trail with few leads winds through dangerous territory -- where Anna must confront the dark side of the desert ... and the human heart.
Isle Royale National Park, Houghton, Michigan	Barr has written an intriguing if unusual story that successfully combines a refreshing enthusiasm for nature, an impassioned entreaty for environmental awareness, and an engrossing murder mystery. Leaving Texas to take a job in northern Michigan, park ranger Anna Pigeon soon becomes involved in a puzzling murder involving a drowned diver and a mysterious shipwreck. Her investigation puts her in touch with some odd characters, including Pizza Dave, who's as large as a small tractor, and Holly and Hawk, a brother and sister dive team whose love for the briny deep hides a dark secret. Between extracting fish hooks from the limbs of amateur fishermen, instructing naive tourists about the local wildlife, and corralling drunken boaters, Anna puts her considerable skills toward solving the puzzle of who killed the diver and why. Barr, a park ranger, provides plenty of authentic details about life in the great outdoors, and her deft plotting and appealingly quirky characters give her story plenty of punch. Anna Pigeon is tough-minded, strong, sensitive, vulnerable, and funny
Mesa Verde National Park, near Cortez and Mancos, Colorado	Anna Pigeon, a park ranger at Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park, is a woman on the mend. She's a widow, she's battling alcohol dependence, and she's recently changed jobs. Despite her pain, she reaches tentatively toward Stacey Meyer, a ranger trainee who has also endured his share of middle-aged pain. Shortly after he mishandles a crisis that results in a child's death, Stacey himself is found dead. Suicide? Anna thinks it unlikely. 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, who serves the functions of both a Dr. Watson and a voice on the other end of a crisis hot-line. This third entry in the acclaimed series is as much a personal journey of self-discovery as it is a mystery. Anna is a flawed but admirable woman struggling daily to determine her values and her value in a harsh world. An outstanding novel.
Lassen Volcanic National Park, Mineral, California	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 Pigeon 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.
Cumberland Island National Seashore, Saint Marys, Georgia	In Endangered Species, Nevada Barr's latest mystery featuring park ranger Anna Pigeon, the landscape changes from the stern beauty of Anna's beloved Southwest to Georgia's Cumberland Island National Seashore. Here, in an alien world of loggerhead turtles and wild ponies, Anna finds herself embroiled in mystery when a drug- interdiction airplane crashes, the result of espionage. Though the territory may be unfamiliar to her, Anna never loses her head as she navigates a sure path through eccentric islanders, fellow rangers, and many unexpected twists and turns to discover the heart of the riddle.
Carlsbad Caverns National Park, near Carlsbad, New Mexico	Nevada Barr's sixth mystery featuring protagonist Anna Pigeon descends into a cave in the midst of Carlsbad Caverns to seek out the best place for a murder. Pigeon's mental and detective skills are tested by her claustrophobia as she rappels into a rescue effort for an injured colleague. With every tortuous step Pigeon takes into the deep, the tension increases as it becomes clear that more is at stake than just a rescue effort. Classically, there is the shortest of lists of possible suspects: as Anna herself realizes, it's unlikely that the convenient tramp could find his or her way hundreds of feet underground. However, Barr manages the restraints of the convention beautifully, and the suspense remains taut until the perpetrator is revealed. Although similar to Tony Hillerman in her appreciation and descriptions of spectacular natural resources and familiarity with the National Park Service, Barr is the stronger writer and manipulates her plot more effectively. Where Hillerman relies on discussing Native American techniques of observing and participating in the natural world to add character to his books, Barr is firmly in the camp of REI and techniques that aid the contemporary struggle to explore, admire, and protect the natural beauty central to her mystery. Minor characters are often one-dimensional, but more important players have more to them than an obvious veneer of good or evil. Anna herself is plagued by personal demons of loneliness, a recurring struggle with alcohol, and a deep fondness for cats and the parks in which she works. These elements as well as the mystery itself keep Blind Descent from being simplistic and make for a good and entertaining read.
Statue of Liberty National Park, Liberty Island, New York	Imagine Nevada Barr's delight in discovering that there is actually a national park right smack in the middle of New York City--Gateways Park, which encompasses Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. She could continue her splendid series about park ranger Anna Pigeon and still do some serious shopping at Bendel's and Berghdorf's, the kind of stores you don't find in the New Mexico cave setting of Blind Descent (her last adventure). The ploy works: Barr is probably the only mystery writer who could see a natural environment under New York's slick and sleazy skin. Anna is in Manhattan to look after her sister Molly, seriously ill with pneumonia and a kidney infection. Pigeon moves in with a ranger friend who has a place on Ellis Island. There's not much natural wildlife unless you count her feathered namesakes, but she still manages to find a lot to contemplate--especially the suspicious suicide of a teenage girl who leaps from Liberty's ledge, followed not long after by the security guard who tried to stop her. But Anna's snooping puts her own life in jeopardy. She survives several attacks and a near drowning--events as frightening as any of the fires, floods, and hurricanes from her past adventures. Barr neatly ties up her plot--ending with a brilliant chase scene across the waters from Manhattan to Liberty Island.
Natchez Trace Parkway, Tupelo, Mississippi	After her urban adventures on New York's Ellis Island in Liberty Falling, park ranger Anna Pigeon has finally "heeded the ticking of her bureaucratic clock" and signed on for a promotion in the boonies: district ranger on the Natchez Trace Parkway. Anna's mental images of Mississippi come from black-and-white stock photos from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, so it's not surprising that she finds it beautiful but strange, its residents caught in a teased-hair, fried-food time warp. But she's got more than an unhealthy diet to worry about--as the first female district ranger on the Trace, she immediately encounters more than a few good ol' boys and local miscreants who resent her authority, especially after a 17-year-old beauty is murdered on a booze-soaked prom night near the Trace, her head covered with a KKK-style sheet. There are plenty of reasons her friends and family might have wanted Danielle Posey dead, ranging from her $40,000 insurance policy to jealousy to flat-out insanity. Anna wonders whether the sheet's a red herring, but she can't dismiss it entirely. Though the local culture's no longer built around segregation, racism still exists at a deep level that Anna finds unsettling. Both Danielle Posey and the prime suspect--her boyfriend--are white, but Danielle had secrets her friends won't reveal. Still, no one else appears to be in danger, until a prankster--or could it be a murderer?--sets an alligator loose in Anna's garage (nearly killing her faithful black Lab, Taco) and a local preacher commits suicide. With the help of the handsome local sheriff, Paul Davidson, Anna pulls together clues from local history, Civil War reenactors, and the Mississippi mud and kudzu. Anna Pigeon's one tough bird--she survives not only a little alligator wrestling but also a brutal attack that leads her to the truth of what happened to Danielle Posey and why. What's most fascinating is how much of her famous emotional shield she lets slip in the process.
Glacier National park, Northwest Montana	Park ranger Anna Pigeon, the fortyish heroine of Barr's popular series, is back, tracking grizzlies through the unforgiving landscape of Glacier National Park as part of a scientific investigation that's outlined with more detail than anyone who's not totally fascinated by these awesome animals will care about. In fact, the description of what actually goes into the lures set to attract the bears so they can be tagged and counted is guaranteed to rumble the strongest stomach--but that's just the back story in this newest Pigeon adventure. When the mutilated body of the stepmother of one of the bear trackers turns up in a remote corner of the park, and it becomes clear that she met death at the hands of a human rather than the claws of a grizzly, Anna goes on the hunt for the killer. Barr's strength is in depicting the natural surroundings in which her heroine finds inspiration, solace, and comfort, and she limns the gorgeous landscape of Glacier with consummate skill. But her plotting leaves much to be desired, and when she finally reveals the killer's identity, motivation, and especially his accomplice, the discriminating reader may be tempted to throw this book at the nearest teddy bear. The trick ending is too much to stomach, unless you're a grizzly who'll eat (almost) anything. Up to that point, however, there's much to appeal to Barr's fans: another beautifully drawn portrait of a piece of America's vanishing wilderness and a few hours in the company of an appealingly cranky heroine whose appreciation of it knows no bounds.

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