A Superior Death

Anna Pigeon #2

by Nevada Barr

Park ranger Anna Pigeon returns, in a mystery that unfolds in and around Lake Superior, in whose chilling depths sunken treasure comes with a deadly price. In her latest mystery, Nevada Barr sends Ranger Pigeon to a new post amid the cold, deserted, and isolated beauty of Isle Royale National Park, a remote island off the coast of Michigan known for fantastic deep-water dives of wrecked sailing vessels. Leaving behind memories of the Texas high desert and the environmental scam she helped uncover, Anna is adjusting to the cool damp of Lake Superior and the spirits and lore of the northern Midwest. But when a routine application for a diving permit reveals a grisly underwater murder, Anna finds herself 260 feet below the forbidding surface of the lake, searching for the connection between a drowned man and an age-old cargo ship. Written with a naturalist's feel for the wilderness and a keen understanding of characters who thrive in extreme conditions, A Superior Death is a passionate, atmospheric page-turner.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Mystery Thriller, Audiobook, Crime, Thriller, Suspense

310 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Nevada Barr is a mystery fiction author, known for her "Anna Pigeon" series of mysteries, set in National Parks in the United States. Barr has won an Agatha Award for best first novel for Track of the Cat.

Barr was named after the state of her birth. She grew up in Johnstonville, California. She finished college at the University of California, Irvine. Originally, Barr started to pursue a career in theatre, but decided to be a park ranger. In 1984 she published her first novel, Bittersweet, a bleak lesbian historical novel set in the days of the Western frontier.

While working in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Barr created the Anna Pigeon series. Pigeon is a law enforcement officer with the United States National Park Service. Each book in the series takes place in a different National Park, where Pigeon solves a murder mystery, often related to natural resource issues. She is a satirical, witty woman whose icy exterior is broken down in each book by a hunky male to whom she is attracted (such as Rogelio).

Currently, Ms. Barr lives in New Orleans, LA.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/nevada...

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed my five-day/four-night trip to Michigan, but the two nights I had reserved for the U.P. left me no time to visit Isle Royale (the island national park a six hour ferry ride from Houghton), so when I returned to Ohio I decided to extend my vacation mentally by reading "A Superior Death," a Nevada Barr mystery in which Ranger Anna Pigeon solves a murder while stationed on the Isle. I got the park atmosphere I was looking for, and an enjoyable mystery too.

I guessed the solution to the murder about thirty pages before Anna did (just about right for my taste), learned a lot of interesting things about the day-to-day activities of park rangers, and found the last third of the book very suspenseful, filled with exciting accounts of deep-diving and dangerous boat battles.

Since I'm not really a nature-buff and I didn't fall in love with Anna, I may not read another book in the series, but I liked this one and would recommend it--particularly to my nature-loving friends.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Park Ranger Anna Pigeon is back on a new assignment, this time to a National Park up in Lake Superior. Unlike her last posting in the hot Texas desert, she spends her days out on the cold water, kayaking and driving a rescue boat to pick up stranded motorists. One thing I really like is how the author thoroughly immerses you in both the day-to-day life of being a ranger and also the details of that particular park. It’s like getting to take a little vacation to each park site with each book! In this one, there is an old legend from nearly a hundred years ago of settlers where during the long winter, the husband turned to cannibalism and killed his wife. And also, there’s sunken shipwrecks with bodies from decades ago perfectly preserved…. And one body that seems a little more recent. Anna is tracking disappearances off the island, trying to figure out how the new dead body at the bottom of the lake got there, and doing a lot of kayaking! I have a new appreciation for park rangers!

[Lisa Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Isle Royale National Park,
Lake Superior, Michigan
Photo by Lorelei Lane


Rocky lichen-covered shoreline of Mott Island
Photo by gsgeorge


Rock Harbor Light in Fog
Photo by ohkayeor


Underwater photo from: Scuba Emporium
Chicago, Illinois


★★★½☆ (This is a review of the audiobook.) Though this novel isn’t written in first-person point-of-view, Barbara Rosenblat sounds like the way I think Anna Pigeon would. She does a nice job here narrating. While she doesn’t do a lot of vocal ranges for the many characters, she does a good job of telling the story, and delivering Anna’s thought process.

Each book in this series has a different background setting in a U.S. National Park; this one is set in Isle Royale National Park, an isolated spot where wolves and moose abound, far from the sights and sounds of everyday civilization. As a protagonist, I enjoy Anna Pigeon, the autonomous - but insatiably curious - ranger employeed by the Park Service. In this second installment of her series by Nevada Barr, I like that there is a complex mystery – or should I say mysteries – running throughout. So much so that I’m glad Shelfari has a list of characters to which an audio listener may refer.

I like Ms. Barr’s writing style, and she has a way of describing the stunning beauty of Anna’s soundings, be they an eerie underwater dive to a 1927 shipwreck in Todd Harbor off Kamloops Point in the depths of Lake Superior, or the kayaking sites around lichen-covered rugged coves of Passage and Mott Islands.

The island’s somewhat gruesome history—it was named for Charlie Mott, who had tried to eat his wife one long and hungry winter—was all but exorcised by the banal necessities of bureaucratic life.

In addition, I like that the multiple mysteries are solved along the way, not all at once at the end; some are connected, some not. I did have some issues with the ultimate justice for some of them, but not enough that I won’t continue with this series. Plus, it really did make me want to visit this beautiful National Park on the Canadian boarder.

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Anna Pigeon has her problems: grief for her late husband, very few close relationships, a drinking problem, a job that requires a lot of energy and skill, but doesn't pay very much. Despite all of that, I couldn't help rooting for her.

The worst parts of the novel for me were Anna's two dives, deep into freezing cold Lake Superior. I could barely keep my eyes on the page, I was so freaked out. I'm a non-swimmer and the thought of diving scares me shitless. A dangerous dive for Anna, who is relatively new to diving, made my blood run cold and scrambled my emotions. Thank goodness that (having peeked ahead at the blurb of book 3) Anna will be headed back to a warmer, drier park next.

Barr wrote a pretty convoluted plot in this volume. There were an awful lot of oddities. A couple of the red herrings were quite unusual. But as the old saying goes, the truth is stranger than fiction. A park employee is reading Peyton Place at one point, and that book seems highly appropriate with all the strange things that Anna runs into. Unsurprisingly, Anna is okay in the end, ready to head on to Mesa Verde. I'll be glad to follow along.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This author sets her murder mysteries in national parks, like Yosemite. This book is set in my home waters (Upper Michigan / Wisconsin) , on a national park that covers an entire island in the Great Lakes — Isle Royale on Lake Superior. Hence the title.

I read this murder mystery some years ago. As I recall, the mystery itself was slow going at first (the heroine, Anna, was sad and pensive because her husband recently died in NYC). Eventually, the plot picked up and became suitably intense at times. I remember a vivid and dangerous dive scene, down to the submerged shipwreck. Also, there was some weird incest / sibling love thing going on.

However, I was disappointed in how Barr portrayed the setting, on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. I have been there, hiking and camping for about 4 days. It's a unique and fascinating place -- an international biosphere, with wild wolves preying on the wild moose, and with carnivorous pitcher plants and other interesting flora. The rocky volcanic island is turning to soil almost right in front of our eyes. Scientists from all over the world conduct research here. I vividly remember my visit, 25 years later.

But from this story, one wouldn't really know. It could have been set on any island.

So I was miffed. Why set your murder mystery in such a location, if you aren't going to make something of it?

I've read a few of the Nevada Barr mysteries. Some are better than others. Some are more grisly than others. This one wasn't too gruesome, but the one set in Yosemite National Park -- High Country -- is grizzly. Er...grisly. Very gruesome.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so glad that I went back to this series. The first book, Track of the Cat, was very good, but I am beginning to think that I liked this one better. Nevada Barr has a way of drawing in the reader in from the very beginning and holding your full attention straight through to the end. Even if you think you have figured out where she is going, you still hold on to each word in case there is something there that you might not have picked up on in the beginning, but you are darn sure you want to know in the end.

This time Anna Pigeon has been reassigned to Isle Royale in Lake Superior, hence the name, where one of her assigned duties is watching over the Kamloops, a vessel that sunk in 1927 with 5 sailors on board. Well, that is what she has been told, but up comes a diver swearing that there are six men down there. Now Anna is not a big fan of deep diving considering the fact that if you come up too quickly the closest decompression chamber is two very painful hours away. That is if you do not die in the mean time.

Yep, there is an extra body down there and why is he wearing an old-fashioned sailor’s uniform. Darn, the peaceful summer with the entertaining wild life and the adventuresome scuba diving tourists just got a whole lot more troublesome.

This is not the only story going on. Nope, that would be too easy for Anna. You also have the missing wife of a fellow ranger, you have a head twisting “what did you say” relationship involving Hawk and Holly who are members of a dive team and you have a young incorrigible named Carrie Ann who keeps sneaking off to the utter frustration of her mother.

I know it sounds like a lot to keep track of, but Ms Barr writes each character so clearly that the only confusion that I had was which boat belonged to whom.

Without being repetitive, there are occasional get-caught-up sections where things are re-analyzed, much in the thinking aloud concept where the reader says “oh, that’s right, that makes sense”. The who-done-it part is not apparent from the beginning and the reader is lead down many different paths as Anna herself is trying to figure it all out at the same time.

I really enjoyed this book and I will definitely move the next in the series up on my list. The books are not deep, but they are twisty so you will have to pay attention.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

In September I turned to mysteries as a way to ease my overworked brain. A good thing about mysteries is the bad guy or gal gets caught and also gets what is coming to him or her, unlike our current morally ambiguous society.

After reading A Mind to Murder by P D James, I picked up Nevada Barr's second novel, A Superior Death. Early this year when our current President seemed to be overriding the sanctity of the U S National Parks, I vowed to read one a month of Nevada Barr's mysteries, each set in a different National Park. As with other vows I have taken in my life, I have been faithless. In nine months I have only read one.

Anna Pigeon is a park ranger who also fights crime. In A Superior Death she has been transferred from the dry heat of the Texas high desert (Track of the Cat) to the chilly dampness of Lake Superior at Isle Royale National Park. She is moping a bit and shivering a lot, getting chomped on by mosquitoes and meeting a wide range of eccentric characters, when a grotesque underwater murder surfaces.

A current resident of Isle Royale is found dead in the wreck of an old cargo ship. The few clues available do not add up. The man had seemingly no enemies and was a partner in a concession that provided boat tours to summer visitors at the park. The discovery of his body 260 feet below the chilly surface of the lake coincided with the disappearance of another park ranger's wife, a woman with whom he was rumored to be romantically entangled. Had he made an enemy after all?

As I learned in Track of the Cat, Anna Pigeon is a fearless and determined woman. In this book she is required to learn how to dive deep in the freezing waters. An annoying FBI agent sent in to assist in the investigation is convinced that the crime stems from drug smuggling. A kooky couple, new-age types, believes that the missing wife was eaten, cannibal style, by her husband. If that were not enough, a teenage girl seems to be the victim of an adult sexual predator.

Barr juggles a large list of characters (I wish I had made a list) and is forever moving Pigeon around the island into various coves as well as back and forth between different settlements. I found a great map online allowing me to track her movements. I also learned from my husband, who grew up in Michigan, that he had gone to Boy Scout camp on the island. He is reading the book now.

As the deep dives take their toll, as the chilly fogs move in and out, a bewildering list of possible suspects grows and danger mounts. This was an exciting read full of extreme adventure but also occasional humor. I have renewed my vow!

[Olivermagnus · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the second in the long running Anna Pigeon series and is set on and around Lake Superior. The main character, Anna Pigeon, is a park ranger who has recently transferred from Big Bend National Park in Texas to the summer chill of Isle Royale National Park on Lake Superior. Due to terrible storms, Lake Superior has claimed many ships including the Edmund Fitzgerald, famously memorialized in a Gordon Lightfoot song, and the Kamloops, which sunk in 1927 and is the focus of this book. In fact, there are five perfectly preserved corpses still on the Kamloops.

When a diving team returns from a dive there, they show Anna a video of six corpses floating in the ship. Anna knows there are only five, so she and a ranger team, accompanied by an FBI agent, dive down to bring up the body of a local man. It turns out there are plenty of suspects, including his diving partners, an alcoholic park ranger who is jealous, and he disappeared on his wedding night but his wife never reported him missing. It's a complex story filled with colorful characters. The history of the island is a character in itself.

This was a clever and suspenseful mystery with an interesting plot. The characters were very well written and there were plenty to choose from so the eventual killer is not apparent from the beginning. Anna is a great main character, flawed and struggling, and I look forward to reading more about her in the future.

[Kate prefers books to people · Rating 3 out of 5]

90s mystery featuring a female park ranger in the US national parks.

I'm still not in love with this series, but book 2 is better than book one. I think the narrator from the audiobooks did a disservice to the series. It reminds me of the later Kinsey Milhone books when the narrator playing the mid 30s PI sounded like a frail octogenarian. This narrator sounds mildly annoyed the whole time. I had to switch it off and go look for print.

This book had the main character moved out of her comfort zone in the desert to a park on Lake Superior. There are 2 weird things going on: a strange couple thinks a park employee ate his wife (they talk to a teddy bear, so....) and divers at a known ship wreck find a recent body.

[Mike Finn · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

'A Superior Death‘ (1995) is the second book about Park Ranger Anna Pigeon. She’s moved from the Texas desert where I met her in ‘Track Of The Cat‘ and is now working in the Isle Royale National Park where she spends most of her time on or in Lake Superior. She's had to master how to navigate using only radar and how to dive into the deep dark lightless water where the shipwrecks with protected status rest.

Nevada Barr's storytelling is confident and engaging. She makes the story accessible without being overly simple. She keeps Anna at the centre of the story, not as a plot device but as a person. Almost every scene is written to reveal as much about Anna Pigeon's character as about place she's in or the mystery she's trying to solve. Anna is the main reason I read these books. I like her slightly outside the norm way of thinking. It's also a nce change to read an introvert character who isn't describerd as shy.

'A Superior Death' started well, establishing Anna in her new environment and giving me a strong sense of what it would be like to be on the water all day and how scary it would be to have to dive so deep to reach a wreck that your thinking would be impaired at the same time when a single mistake might kill you. 

Unfortunately, while the book was strong on place and peoplee, it was weak on plot. I felt the book lost energy in the middle because too many things were going on with too many suspects. The pace picked up in the last third of book, accelerating to a tense, action-packed and surprising ending.

So, although 'A Superior Death' didn't quite live up to 'Track Of The Cat', I still want to know what Anna does next. In January, I'll be reading ‘Ill Wind‘, the fourth book in the series. It's set in Mesa Verde, a National Park that I have fond memories of.

[Book Concierge · Rating 2 out of 5]

Anna Pigeon returns for her second mystery. This time she has left the southwest and is now assigned to Isle Royale National Park, in Lake Superior, just north of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It’s remote and a very different environment from what she was used to, and she’s having some trouble adjusting. She continues to rely on frequent phone calls to her sister, Molly, in New York, and to the numbing effects of a bottle of wine. When a body is found floating within a wreck on the lake bottom, Anna has to confront some of her own fears to help recover the victim. But it seems this was not an accidental drowning – the man was murdered.

There are plenty of suspects, despite the remote location – an alcoholic has-been with marital problems was jealous of the him; the victim’s own wife didn’t report him missing; his boat and business were left to two twin siblings who are not relatives; a sleazy park employee who had to leave his previous post quickly has been seen sneaking around; and a hippie couple who are being blackmailed may have had enough.

Barr writes a decent suspense novel. The action moves fast and I was caught up in the mystery. There are enough clues to let the reader guess the perpetrator, but I was certain only a few pages before Anna herself had figured it out. I like that Anna is intelligent, strong and resourceful. In general, she takes matters into her own hands and acts with due caution. However … the book had several serious editing flaws. We’re told Anna is a vegetarian – several times – then she’s eating a tuna fish sandwich. The name of one of the twins is suddenly changed to that of Anna’s sister for 4 or 5 mentions on a single page before being correctly referenced for the balance of the book. A key piece of evidence is “stolen” by one of the suspects, and later the authorities are examining it.

What really made me lower the rating, however, is an issue with a senior administrator making a joke about having a child “escorted” by a known pedophile. That is just NOT funny, and such a comment would – I hope – get said manager fired. But no one even raises an eyebrow in the novel. Anna actually smiles! I know this was first published in 1994, but really, WHAT was Barr (and her editor and agent and publisher) thinking?!

[Jukaschar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well written and expertly thought out crime novel. The book takes place mostly on Isle Royale in Lake Superior and the depth with which the author presents the setting is excellent, as was the case with the first Anna Pigeon book.

I really enjoyed getting to know the quite large cast of the book, almost every character felt memorable. The setting was given enough room to really shine. The mystery was equally believable and unexpected.

I will for sure continue reading this series and am already excited to find out what the next setting will be.

[Mena · Rating 5 out of 5]

should have been minus a star for bwtptii but it was on lake superior so 🤷🏼‍♀️

[Jenna Schauer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Official Rating: 2

TL;DR: This book was not my cup of tea. I don't think I will continue to read the rest of the Anna Pigeon books. This was not a great book to follow HOFAS with...

Oof. *Spoilers*

It is very interesting to read a book about a place that you have lived in/worked at. Truthfully, I don't think I would have ever chosen this book on my own... But, my mom read it and wanted me to tell her what parts were accurate to Isle Royale and which weren't. This review is going to be long as it is, so I won't bore you with the details of what is accurate and what isn't.

Let's start with the subplots. Something that I will give Barr credit for is adding a TON of intrigue into a not very long book. Ultimately, the majority of these subplots did assist the main plot, but each subplot could have been their own book. So, in no particular order, here are the subplots of this 310 paged book. None of these were fleshed out in a satisfying way (excluding the blackmailing).
* Incestuous TWINS - But don't worry the brother has a vasectomy (because that makes it okay???)
* Missing person of abusive husband (assumed cannibalism)
* Blackmailing - The person being blackmailed may or may not have killed their infant? (It was ruled an accident)
* Pedophilia - Nothing really came of this. The pedophilic character had no negative repercussions and it didn't drive the plot really in any way other than it got Anna onto a boat owned the Patience Bittner
* Drug trafficking
* Alleged affairs

Now, the main plotline....
A diving instructor is found dead at the bottom of Lake Superior inside of the shipwreck "Kamloops". He has no diving gear on and is dressed up in a old-timey sailor's outfit. Who killed him?
*He died the night he got married (that detail was never revisited, like why wasn't he with his new wife)
*The incest twins (who were his friends and business partners) found his dead body, in diving gear, an decided not to report it, but to dress him up in the costume and put him in the "Kamloops", because it is "What he would have wanted".
*The killer ended up being the mother of the daughter who was groomed, because there was missing expensive wine being smuggled on the "Kamloops".

Onto the character of Anna Pigeon... To be fair, I have not read any other Anna Pigeon books (and I probably won't), but I just didn't care about her character. Especially didn't care enough about her to have any investment in her one single ~spicy scene~, where she and the guy she is hooking up with (the incestuous brother btw) both cry. Now Anna is a widow and this was the first time that she was hooking up with anyone since the passing of her husband, which I respect that. EXCEPT. This scene was entirely unnecessary. It didn't further the plot. It didn't make her relationship with Hawk (the incestuous brother) any different than what it had already been. It was also extremely out of place for the rest of the tone of the book. It could have been left out and nothing in the book would have changed. And listen. I am all for unnecessary spice scenes IF, it fits the rest of the tone of the book (i.e. it is a smut book) and/or it is a well written scene. Neither were true.

[Jane Stewart · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK as a mystery. Fabulous audiobook narrator. Bad recording equipment.

I BOUGHT THIS BECAUSE OF THE AUDIOBOOK NARRATOR:
Authors: one way to get people to read your books is to have a great narrator. The best ones have fans. I wanted to buy more books narrated by Barbara Rosenblat, and this was on her list. I probably would not have purchased it otherwise. The narrator was great.

THE RECORDING EQUIPMENT WAS POOR QUALITY. YOU COULD HEAR THE NARRATOR’S BREATHING AND SWALLOWING. This was recorded in 1998. Maybe the equipment wasn’t as good back then. The breathing was distracting.

THE STORY:
This is part of the Anna Pigeon series. She is a park ranger, has a gun, and can arrest people. Each book has her working in a different national park. In this book she works on an island in Lake Superior near the Canadian border. Someone is killed, a woman disappears, someone is being blackmailed, and there is a problem happening with a teenager. It is a typical mystery-detective story with Anna talking to many different people and gradually solving the various mysteries. Anna’s job is patrolling the area in her park ranger boat. She works alone, no partner. Her husband died several years earlier.

OPINION:
There are several interesting characters. Clues surface during the story which I like. Anna was facing danger a couple times. She impressed me with her competence at catching and arresting those stronger than she - and when she did not have her gun. There are some diving scenes with danger. Overall I have to say it was OK, but it never really grabbed me. I want to be surprised, or delighted, or smiling, which didn’t happen. But I think readers who love mystery-detective stories will be happy with this.

You need to suspend disbelief to enjoy it. Anna does some things that would not happen in real life - or should not happen - kind of stupid. Like chasing a dangerous criminal without a partner or a weapon. In one chase Anna’s fellow rangers were occupied, but she could have used her radio to get other locals or other authorities involved. Anna was new to diving, yet she was diving alone at night in dangerously deep and frigid water.

DATA:
Narrative mode: 3rd person. Unabridged audiobook length: 11 hrs and 37 mins. Swearing language: strong including religious swear words, but only used once or twice. Sexual content: one sex scene occurred. It was referred to with no details. Setting: around 1990 mostly Isle Royale (in Lake Superior) near Houghton, Michigan. Book copyright: 1994. Genre: mystery detective.

[Kalena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mystery/2nd book in the Anna Pigeon series. 2nd book read by this author. National Park ranger, Anna Pigeon, has moved on from her beloved Texas to Isle Royale National Park on Lake Superior. This area of Michigan is noted for having many shipwrecks and deep water diving and boating are obvious recreational activities. As always, I am drawn to these books because I love the state and national parks. The author is adept at describing the wilderness and the pros and cons of ranger life. The character development is okay, but the plot was fairly terrible. How Anna gets herself into such crazy situations reminds me of an adult Nancy Drew with a drinking problem. Despite not liking this book, I am definitely continuing the series (because I already own the next 3 or 4 books) and I love reading about the parks and wildlife.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why have I never picked this series up before?! I've been vaguely aware of it for ages, but it never appealed to me for whatever reason. But I wanted a book set in Isle Royale to read on my trip there, so I decided on this one. So good! It was lovely to read this book while I was on the island, but beyond that connection, the way Barr writes about nature and the park is spellbinding. What a wonderful way to learn about a National Park. Additionally, I found Anna Pigeon to be a really compelling character--loved her inner voice and the fact that she's a 40 year old woman with no kids leading a not so traditional life. Will definitely be reading more of this series!

[Liza · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first Nevada Barr mystery I read. I think I've read them all now. It is well written, full of surprising twists and gripping- just what you want in a mystery. I am JEALOUS that Ms. Barr gets to travel around living in our wonderful national parks and making up great stories about them. Fortunately she is very good at it.

[Nolan · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this second book in the series, Anna has left behind her hot desert Texas assignment for something colder and wetter. Her supervisors at work have assigned her to an island on Lake Superior, and she isn’t adjusting well. She did manage to bring her assistant, a single mom with a little girl, with her, so things could be worse. But not only must Anna deal with all that water, she must cope with some strange characters, two of whom insist an island resident has killed and eaten his wife.

Anna shrugs that off by and large, but when someone murders another resident and places her body inside an old shipwreck, Anna's sleuthing skills kick into high gear.

There are dark elements to this mystery. Naturally, there is the inevitable scene in which Anna nearly dies, and that's one of the most suspenseful gripping heroine-almost-dies scenes I've read in a while. You don't have to have read the first book in this series to thoroughly benefit from this one. The weird characters described here so convincingly are probably enough to keep you reading even if the plot doesn't work for you, and I'd be surprised if you're a mystery lover and find the plot unsatisfying.

[GEOrocks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Park ranger at Isle Royale NP in Lake Superior spends a lot of time on a boat and in the back country yet still manages to get involved with the drama of coworkers and investigate a murder. Slow start but overall a fun read!

[Linds · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a murder mystery that takes place in Lake Superior, Minnesota. The author, Nevada Barr is an ex-ranger and this series all take place in Federal Parks.

Lots of scuba diving scenes.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good unique mystery, and a great protagonist. Love the outdoors setting and roughing it. It's nice to discover a new (to me) series and author. Ok, on to the next one.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened to the audiobook while huddled up in a tent in rainstorm on a 6 day backpacking trip to Isle Royale National Park! My first ever audiobook! Good way to pass the time and very cool to hear a story set in the same place I was hiking, but the plot was a bit exaggerated.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I might be able to stomach this series, as you get almost a whole host of new characters and a completely different setting with each one. I did have to put it down once, there at the end, when things were dicey. Pretty good.

The woman had a vague and whimsical nature, as if she believed, along with Liza Minnelli, that reality was something she must rise above.

A woman with an imagination wouldn’t have lasted a week in the position.

Again she missed the desert. There, if something bit, one usually died of it. She hated this nickel and diming to death, one bloody sip at a time.

A few of the younger people thought he was a semiromantic has-been. Anna suspected he was a never-was, drinking and talking to rectify a personal history that was a disappointment.

“You’ve got expectant ducks and an empty pickle jar,” Anna summed up the evidence.

They shared a smile that made Anna lonely.

Angelique survived by snaring rabbits with nooses made from the hair of her head.

The lake, at least in the harbor, chose to be kind, and rocked Anna gently to sleep before she had time to think too hard.

He looked awful. His face was gray and puffy and his eyes were bloodshot. The skin on his neck hung loose. He looked like a man who was drinking heavily, sleeping poorly, and was badly hung over. Anna doubted he had eaten his wife. In the shape he was in he probably couldn’t keep vanilla yogurt down, much less a woman.

The dispatcher saw nothing but she heard everything;

shaking hands with her is like catching a butterfly—all soft and fluttering you’re afraid you’ll crush.

Those deep sensitive types get funny yens. Myself, I like bluff hearty types who swat you on the behind.”

Sandra listened with a concentration that flattered most people, including Anna, into telling her things they’d never really intended to.

But the kayak stayed afloat, climbed hills and slid through valleys with a structural certainty of design that lent her courage. She stroked with clocklike regularity, taking deep, even bites of the lake. Shoulders ached. Elbows burned. Anna pushed herself harder. There were times that hurting was a part of, times the fatigue and the fear were necessary ingredients: fires to burn away the dead wood, winds to blow away the chaff, closing the gap between body and brain.

A squat round-bodied man stood above her on the dock. He had a Canadian look.

“We must’ve seen a hundred pairs of shoes. They looked like if you dried them out you could wear them home.” “Did you try them on?” Anna asked casually. Both divers looked offended. “We did not try them on,” Bobo said with cold dignity.

Lucas Vega was what Anna considered an Old World ranger. He believed in wilderness, in the Park Service, in the sanctity of the NPS credo: “. . . to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such a manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

he worked for peanuts. Lucas Vega also believed in noblesse oblige. He could afford to. Lucas was the only son of a woman who owned seventy-five hundred acres of San Diego County, one of the last existing Spanish land grants in southern California.

Martini’s Law taking effect. A lot of these guys have a sense of humor that’s not of this world. The ecstasy of the deep? Too much weightlessness?”

Divers, the serious ones with a lot of dives to their credit, had a different way of looking at life. Not as if it were cheap—they strove to stay alive and risked a great deal to keep each other alive—but they seemed to grasp a connectedness that eluded most people, a sense that life and death were two parts of the same whole, like the crests and the valleys of a wave emerging from the same sea. This realization—if it was a realization—created as many behavior patterns as there were divers;

She didn’t much care to go someplace Mother Nature had gone to such lengths to keep her out of.

For a while they sat without talking. Anna got her daypack and dug out a paperback copy of Ivanhoe. It produced a book’s inevitable effect. In cats it stimulated the urge to sit on the pages. In humans it stimulated conversation.

No, she decided, he wasn’t trying intentionally to provoke her. He was just naturally irritating.

“A Submerged Cultural Resource Specialist who doesn’t like diving? What happened? Shark bite you?”

A secure government job with health and retirement benefits. Easy to get for an ex-Navy man with veteran’s preference in hiring. Dig a comfortable little air-conditioned niche and wait out the years until retirement while hundreds of overqualified people worked as seasonals, scraping by winters doing odd jobs, because they wanted to save the world—or at least one little corner of it. It wasn’t hard to understand how Denny had come by his contempt for Jim.

For half a minute the divers lay in a puddle on the boat deck like a couple of unpleasant monsters dragged in with the day’s catch.

Anna rocked back on her heels. She felt as if she’d been punched in the solar plexus. It confused her. She hadn’t known she cared.

It was as if no one could die until she had been informed.

Women could sit with grief, hold its hands, watch it pour from the eyes of friends and children, lie down beside it and help it to rest. Their delicate strength would weave a net strong as spun steel, keep the widow Castle from hitting bottom.

Evidently Lucas had radioed for a lift back to Mott. He had left the Lorelei so Anna could get back to Rock, and she blessed him for being a true gentleman.

and all at once Anna was unpleasantly sober.

wondering what Denny had been to Patience.

There was a sense of gathering, of control; a powerful woman remembering who she was.

Wine is important.

Wine is history, comfort and strength, food and drink, art and commerce. You can’t say that about much else.”

forgotten amid the Sturm and Drang

Remembering Lucas’s pointed stare, she stopped eavesdropping and began searching the deck, not looking for anything, just looking at what was there and what was not.

She had that rare sense of knowing, at the moment it was happening, that she was happy, that life was okay. She stopped talking to better enjoy it.

Sharing: the obvious solution and one that never would have occurred to her in a thousand years.

That Denny really loved her, is my guess. All that history’s got to prove something, right?” “Something besides persistence?”

Only not quite Viking. He wanted to be put aboard a Spanish galleon or an old Civil War gunboat, all decked out, then sunk where there’d once been a reef. He had this mental picture of the fish coming to live on the wreck with him.” She stopped short as if she’d realized the direction her words were going.

He was wearing a turn-of-the-century ship captain’s uniform.

It was the best reason Anna could think of for feeding one’s husband to the fishes.

In its four-thousand-year human history, ISRO had been farmed and mined and fished, hunted and burned and logged.

Anna wandered up the dock answering questions, admiring dead fish, and—one of a ranger’s most difficult jobs—declining free beers.

“Let me slip into something less governmental

“You look like a man with the bends.”

before the weaseling process began?

She remembered she was, after all, off duty and she remembered that there were other things to do with bronzed young men than interrogate them.

“Denny was a little judgmental, it seems,” Anna said cautiously. Hawk laughed. “One of Denny’s favorite sayings was: ‘It’s hard to work well in a group when you’re omnipotent. ’ Denny was always right. He really was.

He saw other people’s twists and bends as clearly as if they’d been laid out on graph paper.”

“Carrie’s disappeared.” Anna hoped it was not along with another case of pickle relish.

She’s been coming home at two and three in the morning with that damp, rumpled look.

I’m alternately pissed off and worried sick. It’s very tiring.”

It was a pleasure to be looking for someone who wasn’t being devoured by a cannibalistic husband, wasn’t floating with old corpses, someone who, at worst, was probably having illicit sex with the busboy.

She had that unpleasant sensation one gets when one turns over the wrong rock. “What the hell is going on?” the nocturnal creature shouted.

On busy days there’d be a line three or four boaters deep waiting to read it before the thumbtacks had even cooled.

When clients paid the 3rd Sister for an adventure it was not unlike making a contract with the devil. There was almost no way out.

unsettlingly old eyes. Ralph Pilcher wasn’t a handsome man, but Anna guessed it had never stood in his way and she felt a sudden stab of pity for his wife. In sympathy with the unknown woman, she moved a couple inches away from his sheltering warmth.

Anna laughed. She was feeling better. She took back her two inches. The hell with Mrs. Pilcher.

The lake wasn’t just cold but frigging, goddam cold, Anna thought as the frigid water struck her face like the slamming of a two-by-four and her sinuses began to ache. Beneath the layers of suiting she could feel her breasts tighten and shrivel.

fear made her utterly obedient.

it’s hard to know a man who defies patterns.

The parks were places apart. Islands of hope, fragments of wilderness in an increasingly developed world, scraps of land trying to be all things to all people: museums, adventures, solitude, recreation, vacation, research, preservation. Different rules, different lusts, different pressures prevailed. People died for different reasons.

Anna told her, glad to be able to drag out all her fears and panics, expose them to Molly’s harsh, reasoning mind.

“Anna, you’ve been out in the woods too long. If he ate her, for whatever reason, doesn’t that seem a teensyweensy bit psycho to you?”

You make more between coffee breaks than the average ranger takes home in a week.” “Jesus! No wonder you eat your spouses.

“Ciao,” Molly said. “Or is it ‘Happy trails’?” Stay off the menu.”

Anna wished the child would sulk and flop back to where she’d come from.

who the fuck cared? The wine was very much in control. Anna noticed her vocabulary deteriorating.

“Can I have some of that wine?” “Nope.” “You drink too much.” Anna was glad she had never had children. Carrie began scooting over to where Anna sat. Anna hoped she would get splinters in her butt, but the gods were not with her and Carrie arrived unharmed.

“Have you seen Carrie? I’m going to strangle her.” “In that case, yes I have. She went thataway.”

She was always a biddable child.

And on a good vintage there wasn’t even the shadow of an impending hangover to sully it.

“Let me get this straight. You have fallen in ‘like’ with a sinister stranger you believe killed a man. Now you want to confront him face-to-face with his murderous deed. Have you picked out a windblown cliff or an isolated tower to go to all alone and unprotected in the dead of a dark and stormy night?”

Cold-blooded killer or not, Anna thought, he was lovely.

“He died on his wedding night!” Anna realized aloud. “You’d think the bride would have noticed,” Stanton said.

Mosquitoes and Frederick Stanton whined.

He grinned, he shrugged, he shuffled.

“The spouse is always a prime suspect.” “Better than drugs?” “Nothing’s better than drugs.” “No more profiles. Do you, personally, think Jo did it?” “I don’t think,” Stanton replied solemnly. “I’m a government employee.” Anna gave up. His reticence had ceased to amuse or challenge. It merely irritated.

Jo Castle lacked passion. She was a trudger.

Jo looked around as if for a place to sit, didn’t see one and lost interest.

“You wait in the boat,” Anna commanded. Looking positively hangdog, Frederick shambled off down the beach

Denny and Donna; cocaine and cannibalism.

No wonder man was always out to conquer Nature, Anna thought. He can’t bear it that she doesn’t love him, or even hate him. She simply doesn’t give a damn.

One of her peers, a fellow ranger, a commissioned federal law enforcement officer, was bound like a piglet. Anna didn’t know what to do with him. Odds were good she was nearly as surprised at the turn of events as he was. And probably in more trouble. The National Park Service would not be anxious to believe breaking and entering to further an employee’s blackmailing another employee to keep her from exposing God knew what. If Scotty pieced together a good story—a practical joke, climbed in the wrong window—Anna would end up at best with egg on her face, at worst on charges for assaulting an officer. She fervently hoped either Butkus wasn’t thinking that clearly, or the package contained a severed human head or at least a kilo of something incriminating. “Jesus, Scotty, what the hell is going on?” she asked peevishly. “None of your goddamn business,” he said from the floor. Anna thought about that one. “It is,” she decided.

“Then tell me what you know about the late Denny Castle. Like what made him ‘late’?”

After ten P.M. and she was marooned in Rock Harbor with no food, no wine, no dry clothes, no change of underwear, and no place to sleep.

The pasta was gooey and the bread reheated but, glad to be in a warm well-lit place where nice people brought food, she was not inclined to be picky. Patience, looking tired but well groomed,

Anna said to say something.

“Wine’s wine. It’ll get you there.”

Normally, no, but it wasn’t a busy morning and the librarian had always wanted to be a park ranger, so yes, this once.

“Perhaps I didn’t marry well,” Patience said with a wink, “but I divorced brilliantly.

Not just physically spare but psychologically shriveled. Kicking dogs or pulling the wings off flies seemed more his style. Anna knew he would feel no guilt. His self-justifications were rock-solid from years of exercise.

“a bit of a pill.” There was no arguing with him because there was no substance to his complaints. Just sourness born of disappointment.

I’m surprised first wives haven’t been declared a threatened and endangered species.

Boyish again, joyous, he loped along the asphalt path as graceful as a greyhound. “She’s birding again!” he told Anna of his wife. Anna gathered that to bird was to live

The lady across the air shaft slept all day and screamed at her husband all night. And that was the summer the city was infested with rats. The Post was running headlines on it.

“I think I liked you better depressed,” Anna countered. “Why don’t you guys go back to work or whatever it is you do?”

“Carrie seems dull but she’s not stupid and she feels things. She’s never been any good at hiding things either. If she’d been sexually active I think she’d either have gone religious and remorseful or smug and insufferable—depending on how it went. Mostly she’s just been sulky. My guess is no, she’s too scared, too confused. Damn him! She hasn’t even had her first period.”

“Little girls should never have to pay for love,”

Finished, Patience stepped away from him, took a solid stance, doubled one fist inside the other, and, straight-armed, swung a roundhouse. Her knuckles collided with Jim’s jaw just below his left ear and he went down. As the Venture motored away, Anna could hear him screaming, “That’s assault! That’s assault! I’ll press charges!” “He will, you know,” she said. “He’s that slimy.” “So will I,” Patience returned. “And mine will stick.” Carrie Ann began to howl.

the two women and the eternally weeping thirteen-year-old

As in any bureaucracy, the best way up in the Park Service was to produce a smokescreen of paperwork, an avalanche of plans and studies and proposals, but to be very careful to never actually do anything.

This has been one of those life’s-a-bitch-and-then-you-die days. The worst of it is, I remember being happy. I remember when I was a nice woman: cheerful, optimistic, fun.

I would like to have been widowed, like to have widowed myself with my bare hands a time or two—”

“Did you grow up rich?” she asked rudely. Patience didn’t seem to mind the question. “We had ‘plenty,’ as Mother endlessly reminds me, but not rich, no. My parents own a pig farm in Elkhart, Iowa.” She said it in the tone of a nineteenth-century gentlewoman admitting to a fallen sister or an idiot child. “Good honest work,” Anna remarked mildly. “The place smelled of pigs. All my clothes, my hair, the boys I dated, the food I ate, smelled of pigs. I can’t remember not wanting something better. Even when I was tiny, I had this little kid’s vision of heaven.

“This is the good stuff. Too good for me, I kept telling myself, but this talk of pigs has driven me to open it. Once in this life I will have the best. You lucked into it by sheer accident. Here.” Anna sipped. It was the best; the best she had ever had. A red wine, though it showed black with only the moon for light, rich and so warm Anna finally understood all the effete talk of sunshine and hillsides and aging in wood. They drank without talking. The wine was the event. In silence they finished the bottle.

Wishing she were a cat or a shadow or at least sober,

The man is—was—in his late fifties with the figure of a confirmed food worshiper.

It was hard to tell where the hangover ended and the fog began.

Fresh coffee in a real cup; the day was beginning to look less bleak.

Terrible to be all dressed up and nobody to boss.” “Nope. Already got my marching orders from the Acting Chief:

“Talks about PCBs and fish and slime and percentages of whatever in the whatever.

Molly didn’t hold with suicide. “You’ve got to stay in the game. Your luck’s bound to change. Be a shame to miss it,” she liked to say.

I will die calmly, she thought. And preferably not today.

“He didn’t eat her up after all,” Alison said disappointedly.

She wasn’t eaten at all. She wasn’t even dead. She was only hiding.”

“I’m sorry about Oscar,” Anna said finally. “Yes,” Tinker returned. “He was the purest of bears.” Another silence began. Anna didn’t know quite where to look. Funerals, memorial services—dead people—were hard enough to deal with. Dead teddy bears presented a whole new realm of social obstacles.

“Sometimes the wrong people die,” Tinker said philosophically. “But sometimes they don’t.”

[Karmologyclinic · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was going to give it one more star or even a 3 as a lukewarm light mystery novel that you read for passing time and relaxation. But then it started tackling things like violent death, incest, pedophilia, domestic abuse (all different stories, mind you, happening in a small village), using a nonchalant attitude of "hey, this happens, we drink some wine in pajamas and forget about it". I was not annoyed by the difficult themes (I read Val McDermid and love her) but by the indifference and casualness the themes were approached by the author.

It ended with me wanting to punch the book in the face.

The end.

[Skip · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book started very slowly, and much of the book revolved around Anna guessing who was behind the various crimes or her personal loss of her husband, killed by a NYC taxicab. There is a murder, with the dead body being dressed as an old time sailor and left in a wreck on the bottom of Lake Superior, and the disappearance of his supposed lover. Mix in some mischief by her fellow park rangers, who are suspects at various points, but guilty of transgressions other than murder. The ending was a surprise, and Barr's gift is her descriptive prose in the state parks, involving flora and fauna.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed in this particular novel. I had read another of hers and found it moving. This one seemed to be grasping at straws to make a story; murder, sex and language trying to make it interesting. Too bad.

[Anne Venturelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spoiler…..







Seriously way too casual about incest and a 40+year old trying to sleep with a 13yr old. Eww.

[Morgan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Storytelling felt stilted and choppy. TW for incest. No thank you.

[gaymoonreader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book! I read it for my Detective Fiction class, and it is one of my favorite books we have read thus far. Despite it being only around 300 pages long, it packs so much into it, but all of the subplots did not seem overwhelming at all. I felt like they really added something to the story, and I really loved all of them! They really kept things interesting from start to finish, which I enjoyed!

I think Anna is my favorite detective I have ever read because she is badass and independent, but is also incredibly realistic because she has flaws just like every other person in the world. I also really loved that even though she was a woman, people still respected her. Unlike the other detective fiction novels we have read for my class, there was little to no sexism in this book, which was so refreshing!

I really enjoyed all of the subplots. I am not really going to go into them because spoilers, but I thought they really added this extra element to the story. They kept you interested while Anna is trying to solve the murder, which is obviously the main plot. I really enjoyed seeing how all of these really were interesting and didn't take away from the story at all. They really were an extra element that wasn't really present in the other detective fiction novels I read for class, and I don't think I would have enjoyed it half as much had they not been there.

I also really enjoyed Nevada Barr's writing. Its descriptive without being overly so, and it's simplistic, but in the best way possible. It was incredibly easy to just fall into this story, and it just really added something to this novel because I enjoyed how easy to read it was, and it made me fly through this book.

Overall, I really enjoyed this story, the writing, and the characters, and it gave me a new appreciation for the detective fiction genre. I definitely recommend it, and I do plan on reading more of Nevada Barr's work in the future!