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Anna Pigeon #9
Blood Lure
In this mystery in Nevada Barr’s New York Times bestselling series, District Park Ranger Anna Pigeon is betrayed by nature itself, as a most unnatural evil stalks its prey in the pristine West…
Straddling the border between Montana and Canada lies the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park—Anna’s home away from home when she is sent on a cross-training assignment to study grizzly bears. Along with bear researcher Joan Rand and a volatile, unpredictable teenage boy, Anna hikes the back country, seeking signs of bear. But the tables are turned on their second night out, when one of the beasts comes looking for them. Daybreak finds the boy missing, a camper mutilated, and Anna caught in a grip of fear, painfully aware that her lifelong bond with nature has inexplicably snapped...
Straddling the border between Montana and Canada lies the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park—Anna’s home away from home when she is sent on a cross-training assignment to study grizzly bears. Along with bear researcher Joan Rand and a volatile, unpredictable teenage boy, Anna hikes the back country, seeking signs of bear. But the tables are turned on their second night out, when one of the beasts comes looking for them. Daybreak finds the boy missing, a camper mutilated, and Anna caught in a grip of fear, painfully aware that her lifelong bond with nature has inexplicably snapped...
333 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
About the author
Nevada Barr
71 books2,437 followersNevada 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...
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...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 545 reviews
February 7, 2022
In the ninth book of the Anna Pigeon mystery series, Anna is sent to Glacier National Park to learn about DNA studies for park animal management. There were some really interesting passages about how this is done, and how scientists and rangers get data from bears and other animals.
Unfortunately, being up in Montana and in close proximity with bears, Anna and others on her team experience a frightening bear attack, and one member of the team goes missing. While they’re searching for him, they discover a body. As they’re piecing together information about what happened, it’s determined there may be a connection between the missing team member and the victim who was discovered. But what really happened and who is responsible?
I’ve read eight previous books in this series and every time I’m convinced I know “whodunit” I always turn out to be wrong. This one was a real surprise with a fun twist! I like that the mystery took us on some interesting twists and turns and that as always, there is a level of detail in describing daily park ranger life and the intricacies of bear baiting where I learn something new with every book.
Unfortunately, being up in Montana and in close proximity with bears, Anna and others on her team experience a frightening bear attack, and one member of the team goes missing. While they’re searching for him, they discover a body. As they’re piecing together information about what happened, it’s determined there may be a connection between the missing team member and the victim who was discovered. But what really happened and who is responsible?
I’ve read eight previous books in this series and every time I’m convinced I know “whodunit” I always turn out to be wrong. This one was a real surprise with a fun twist! I like that the mystery took us on some interesting twists and turns and that as always, there is a level of detail in describing daily park ranger life and the intricacies of bear baiting where I learn something new with every book.
July 25, 2023
This is the 4th Anna Pigeon mystery I've read . . . over a period of almost 30 years. I always wanted to like the books more than I actually did. The main character is a National Park Ranger, specializing in law enforcement, and they are each set in a specific national park. But they tend to be very violent and bloody stories; Anna herself is often a tragic character.
However! This one I really liked. Setting is Glacier National Park where Anna is on loan to a grizzly bear research project. She's coming from her permanent posting on the Natchez Trail so she particularly appreciates the mountain air and crispness. I had jotted down the quote where she compares the way the sun and air feels between the 2 different places but can't seem to find it.
Lots of good information about Glacier in the book, a strong sense of place and although there is a murder, somehow things resolve very well. There were some unlikely scenes. Yes, Glacier Park Superintendent was short staffed because of sending personnel to California wildfires but still, would a lone ranger be sent to the high backcountry during the height of berry season in an area known to be frequently by grizzlies and with a murderer also somewhere in the immediate vicinity on a difficult overnight hike seeking clues and evidence?? It adds drama but doesn't sound likely.
Enjoyed it though, rounding up to a 4. Favorite quote: "Rarely did Anna find it a burden to walk instead of ride. The mere act of putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward completely on one's own will and strength, gave life a sense of purpose and control."
However! This one I really liked. Setting is Glacier National Park where Anna is on loan to a grizzly bear research project. She's coming from her permanent posting on the Natchez Trail so she particularly appreciates the mountain air and crispness. I had jotted down the quote where she compares the way the sun and air feels between the 2 different places but can't seem to find it.
Lots of good information about Glacier in the book, a strong sense of place and although there is a murder, somehow things resolve very well. There were some unlikely scenes. Yes, Glacier Park Superintendent was short staffed because of sending personnel to California wildfires but still, would a lone ranger be sent to the high backcountry during the height of berry season in an area known to be frequently by grizzlies and with a murderer also somewhere in the immediate vicinity on a difficult overnight hike seeking clues and evidence?? It adds drama but doesn't sound likely.
Enjoyed it though, rounding up to a 4. Favorite quote: "Rarely did Anna find it a burden to walk instead of ride. The mere act of putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward completely on one's own will and strength, gave life a sense of purpose and control."
May 11, 2012
Anna Pigeon, our intrepid park ranger is on a trek through Waterton/Glacier National Park engaged in setting some bear traps to collect hair and scat samples from assorted bears. Technically, she’s off duty and so out-of-uniform when they meet a young man hiking who reeks of malfeasance and in other circumstances, Anna would have had him up against a car demanding his driver’s license and other ID.
That night, in a scene that raised my skepticism (having read too many mysteries, I suppose) she and her tent mate are attacked by a huge bear who doesn’t act in the way most bears would (according to the bear expert along on the trip.) Rory, the other volunteer in his own tent hightailed it out of there and is discovered some miles away in rather sad shape, but only after Anna and Joanna report his disappearance does a search reveal the body of a murdered woman who happens to be Rory’s stepmother. Without giving away the plot, I will say only that numerous connections and suspects provide the elements to a puzzle that keeps the rangers, struggling with other responsibilities which include bear scat analysis, bedeviled. Unlike some lesser mysteries the answer does not fall from the sky, but is compiled through careful analysis of evidence.
Several reviewers have complained about what they considered to be excessive detail with regard to bear DNA, the bear lure, etc., but for me it’s those kinds of details that I find tantalizing but that’s perhaps since I so enjoy collecting information from what I read as well as entertainment.
My suspicion of anthropomorphism that worried me in the beginning was not borne out in the end. Satisfactory.
That night, in a scene that raised my skepticism (having read too many mysteries, I suppose) she and her tent mate are attacked by a huge bear who doesn’t act in the way most bears would (according to the bear expert along on the trip.) Rory, the other volunteer in his own tent hightailed it out of there and is discovered some miles away in rather sad shape, but only after Anna and Joanna report his disappearance does a search reveal the body of a murdered woman who happens to be Rory’s stepmother. Without giving away the plot, I will say only that numerous connections and suspects provide the elements to a puzzle that keeps the rangers, struggling with other responsibilities which include bear scat analysis, bedeviled. Unlike some lesser mysteries the answer does not fall from the sky, but is compiled through careful analysis of evidence.
Several reviewers have complained about what they considered to be excessive detail with regard to bear DNA, the bear lure, etc., but for me it’s those kinds of details that I find tantalizing but that’s perhaps since I so enjoy collecting information from what I read as well as entertainment.
My suspicion of anthropomorphism that worried me in the beginning was not borne out in the end. Satisfactory.
September 23, 2021
Well I love bears and Anna so I really enjoyed this one. It was really well written. I loved the foreshadowing that let me know just a bit more than Anna did. Nevada Barr writes great mysteries.
June 27, 2009
Park ranger/Law enforcer/sleuth Anna Pigeon is invited to Glacier National Park in Montana to help gather grizzly bear DNA for a research project. But when the researcher's camp is trashed and a hiker is found dead, it seems that perhaps nature, known to be cruel, is cold and calculating as well...or is it the work of a two-legged perpetrator instead?
Barr describes Glacier's monumental scenery with the knowledge of someone who has both been there and appreciated it fully. However, she does not seem as adept in her mystery story development. Obvious clues fly out at the reader (red-herrings are obvious, important clues seem emblazoned with neon lights), but unfortunately it takes Anna quite a bit longer to catch on. The denouement is waaaaay over the top, and was visible several miles away.
Barr describes Glacier's monumental scenery with the knowledge of someone who has both been there and appreciated it fully. However, she does not seem as adept in her mystery story development. Obvious clues fly out at the reader (red-herrings are obvious, important clues seem emblazoned with neon lights), but unfortunately it takes Anna quite a bit longer to catch on. The denouement is waaaaay over the top, and was visible several miles away.
June 24, 2017
A friend suggested that I might find the Nevada Barr books interesting, as they are mysteries set in various national parks. Blood Lure is set in Glacial National Park, which we are planning to visit, so it seemed like a good one to start with. I was not disappointed. The story has many twists and turns, and it seems like there are a host of people who could be the villain. Even with only about 20 pages remaining, I was guessing at the villain, and I kept changing my mind. So Blood Lure was a very suspenseful book. It is not great literature, and some of the characters are only shallowly developed, but the story is exciting and the book is hard to put down. I will definitely read more books by Nevada Barr, and recommend this book to others.
January 20, 2019
After starting and abandoning several recently published books, I decided to fall back on some of my favorite authors. I so much enjoy Nevada Barr’s books featuring Anna Pidgeon. And I like being introduced to the various National Parks as Anna works there. This time it is Glacier National Park, and I’ve been there many years ago but just a casual drive through—not the back country that Anna encounters. Anna is at Glacier participating in collecting DNA samples of grizzly bears. Though I probably won’t remember it for long, but was interested in learning about the habits and diet of grizzly bears. There are some tense moments in the book, and unusual turns that keeps the reader tied to the story. And, as always, Barbara Rosenblat brings Anna to
February 8, 2015
I've been reading the Anna Pigeon series of books by this author. I had read the first two, and went to my local library to find more. I didn't find the next one in their collection, so I picked one somewhat at random, and found this, which turns out to be #9 in the series.
I found this to be a rather annoying read. The entire middle of the book was, in my opinion, too wordy, with the protagonist, Anna, spending loads of time thinking and hypothesizing, which would seem to be what one would expect, except that I found it overdone to the point of being annoying. It got to the point where I stopped reading to go watch some trashy TV programs -- that probably says it all. I did this a couple of times, but returned to continue reading. In other words, rather than being sucked in, the book had rather the opposite effect. Finally, the denouement came -- rather too rapidly, I thought. I'd been getting some ideas about what was happening, but didn't foresee everything.
I know that many authors who have become popular have a tendency to become more verbose as they continue to write. I suspect that this is partially that there is pressure on them to get the next book out, and little pressure for someone to do proper copy editing on the book -- in particular, to point out when the author should be cutting things out. You know the kind of thing I'm talking about: "If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter" (http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/...). I'm thinking this might be the case with Nevada Barr. I'll probably go back and read #3, Ill Wind, to see if it's more 'efficient', and less annoying.
I found this to be a rather annoying read. The entire middle of the book was, in my opinion, too wordy, with the protagonist, Anna, spending loads of time thinking and hypothesizing, which would seem to be what one would expect, except that I found it overdone to the point of being annoying. It got to the point where I stopped reading to go watch some trashy TV programs -- that probably says it all. I did this a couple of times, but returned to continue reading. In other words, rather than being sucked in, the book had rather the opposite effect. Finally, the denouement came -- rather too rapidly, I thought. I'd been getting some ideas about what was happening, but didn't foresee everything.
I know that many authors who have become popular have a tendency to become more verbose as they continue to write. I suspect that this is partially that there is pressure on them to get the next book out, and little pressure for someone to do proper copy editing on the book -- in particular, to point out when the author should be cutting things out. You know the kind of thing I'm talking about: "If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter" (http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/...). I'm thinking this might be the case with Nevada Barr. I'll probably go back and read #3, Ill Wind, to see if it's more 'efficient', and less annoying.
October 27, 2020
Do you enjoy the added pleasure of learning something when you read fiction? Entertainment is what novels are written for. But we can and do learn from everything we read. We see how love works, and doesn't. We see how people react to hardships and tragedies. We see how individuals with odd personalities affect those around them. When these lessons are found in abundance, and move us deeply, we have great literature. Something much more than a story, and more than entertainment. But fiction can also fill us with facts. I learn more about the National Parks each time I read Nevada Barr. While her Anna Pigeon stories are detective mysteries, Barr peppers in plenty of well-researched information on the human history, geology, flora and fauna of the featured park.
Blood Lure, 2001, is the 9th Anna Pigeon novel. It takes place in Glacier National Park in Montana. Anna is "on loan" to the park to assist grizzly scientist Joan Rand, who is leading a backcountry project that lures grizzlies with food smells and collects bits of hair left behind to track individual bears and gather census numbers and information on population trends and travel routes. Working with them is 17 year-old Rory Van Dyke, who applied to join the seasonal study.
One night in their remote camp, a bear is heard outside the tents. Something triggers an attack, and Anna and Joan's tent is slashed open, but the bear leaves without injuring them. Rory runs off before they emerge. Before Anna and Joan reach civilization, they are radioed by the superintendent that during the search for Rory, a woman's mutilated body has been found. Backpacking campers at a nearby remote camp all become potential suspects, because the condition of the corpse does not indicate a bear attack. And where is Rory?
Overall, Blood Lure is a solid whodunit among the Anna Pigeon books. When grizzlies are around, suspense is pretty readily created and maintained. Credibility was strained, however, when Anna, a seasoned crime investigator, agreed to go off in the dark alone and unarmed with one of the active murder suspects!
Blood Lure, 2001, is the 9th Anna Pigeon novel. It takes place in Glacier National Park in Montana. Anna is "on loan" to the park to assist grizzly scientist Joan Rand, who is leading a backcountry project that lures grizzlies with food smells and collects bits of hair left behind to track individual bears and gather census numbers and information on population trends and travel routes. Working with them is 17 year-old Rory Van Dyke, who applied to join the seasonal study.
One night in their remote camp, a bear is heard outside the tents. Something triggers an attack, and Anna and Joan's tent is slashed open, but the bear leaves without injuring them. Rory runs off before they emerge. Before Anna and Joan reach civilization, they are radioed by the superintendent that during the search for Rory, a woman's mutilated body has been found. Backpacking campers at a nearby remote camp all become potential suspects, because the condition of the corpse does not indicate a bear attack. And where is Rory?
Overall, Blood Lure is a solid whodunit among the Anna Pigeon books. When grizzlies are around, suspense is pretty readily created and maintained. Credibility was strained, however, when Anna, a seasoned crime investigator, agreed to go off in the dark alone and unarmed with one of the active murder suspects!
February 22, 2018
4 stelle e mezza
Le storie della park ranger Anna sono sempre interessanti e con momenti mozzafiato: anche questa non fa eccezione. Come in precedenza mi spiace non conoscere bene l'inglese perché non riesco ad apprezzare in pieno la descrizione dei vari ambienti naturali e degli animali che vi vivono.
Le storie della park ranger Anna sono sempre interessanti e con momenti mozzafiato: anche questa non fa eccezione. Come in precedenza mi spiace non conoscere bene l'inglese perché non riesco ad apprezzare in pieno la descrizione dei vari ambienti naturali e degli animali che vi vivono.
October 19, 2019
I loved the 9th installment in this series! Unique story line, suspensful, and even educational (if you want to learn a bit about bears) :) Anna Pigeon is such a wonderful, strong, take-no-cr*p lead character! Not much of her personal life in this book so maybe the next one? But, this book sure had me reading without stopping to find out "who done it" and why!
October 7, 2019
The day I got home from our trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park, I opened Nevada Barr's ninth book in her National Park mystery series. In a way, it helped me preserve the wonder of being in wild spaces away from the madness of civilization.
Blood Lure takes place in Glacier National Park in Montana, my favorite park of them all. Of course the madness of civilization does manage to invade the parks along with the humans who visit them. Another madness defies Anna Pigeon, the park ranger whose detective skills feature in these books. Grizzly bears!
Anna was sent to Glacier for training in the study of bears. She trains with Joan Rand, an experienced bear researcher and a much more trusting soul than Anna.
While they are in the back country performing research activities, a grizzly attacks their campsite. The teenage boy working as an assistant to Joan goes missing and a camper who turns out to be the boy's stepmother is found dead of a broken neck with the flesh of her face cut away.
Anna is called upon by the Chief Ranger to help with the investigation. As usual, she is the most competent and must solve what appears to be a family psychological puzzle as well as find the guilty bear.
I think this is my favorite so far, but I may have said that about her last book. Anna is almost supernatural in her daring and life threatening investigation. Or does the strange young man she encounters have special powers? Or is it the bear?
Great bloodcurdling read!
Blood Lure takes place in Glacier National Park in Montana, my favorite park of them all. Of course the madness of civilization does manage to invade the parks along with the humans who visit them. Another madness defies Anna Pigeon, the park ranger whose detective skills feature in these books. Grizzly bears!
Anna was sent to Glacier for training in the study of bears. She trains with Joan Rand, an experienced bear researcher and a much more trusting soul than Anna.
While they are in the back country performing research activities, a grizzly attacks their campsite. The teenage boy working as an assistant to Joan goes missing and a camper who turns out to be the boy's stepmother is found dead of a broken neck with the flesh of her face cut away.
Anna is called upon by the Chief Ranger to help with the investigation. As usual, she is the most competent and must solve what appears to be a family psychological puzzle as well as find the guilty bear.
I think this is my favorite so far, but I may have said that about her last book. Anna is almost supernatural in her daring and life threatening investigation. Or does the strange young man she encounters have special powers? Or is it the bear?
Great bloodcurdling read!
September 24, 2019
There's nothing more exciting that learning about a new national park, even if it is vicariously through the writing of Nevada Barr. I had heard of Glacier National Park straddling the border between Montana and Canada — its about the only national park that my husband has never visited and one of many that I have not. And as a setting for a new mystery, one bound up into the area and the study of grizzly bears, its a good one.
Anna Pidgeon is there to learn more about the grizzlies but there is a whole lot more when the camp, where she is with bear researcher Joan Rand and her assistant, is apparently attacked by a bear and destroyed. Somehow they survive but later a body is discovered, that of the assistant's step mother. and the body is mutilated.
Despite the beauty of the setting and the calming effect of nature, death is in the air and Pidgeon is in the perfect place to do some investigation into the victim and the reasons someone would do it. Its a heady mix and makes for riveting reading.
Anna Pidgeon is there to learn more about the grizzlies but there is a whole lot more when the camp, where she is with bear researcher Joan Rand and her assistant, is apparently attacked by a bear and destroyed. Somehow they survive but later a body is discovered, that of the assistant's step mother. and the body is mutilated.
Despite the beauty of the setting and the calming effect of nature, death is in the air and Pidgeon is in the perfect place to do some investigation into the victim and the reasons someone would do it. Its a heady mix and makes for riveting reading.
October 6, 2017
A nice but bland entry to the Anna Pigeon series. The mystery was way to easy to figure out in this book and there were other side stories that drew away from the over all story that distracting and didn't need to be there. A good chunk of this book was spent educating the reader about grizzly bears.
Anna is in another park to help with a government study when after a brush with a bear she and the expert get separated from their young assistant. From there they find a body of a woman who turns out to be their assistant's stepmother. From there the story breaks into 3 mini-mysteries. Who killed the assistant's stepmother, what is the assistant hiding (because he refuses to help with the investigation and isn't sad his stepmother is dead) and who is the mysterious boy they find up in the mountains.
Anna is in another park to help with a government study when after a brush with a bear she and the expert get separated from their young assistant. From there they find a body of a woman who turns out to be their assistant's stepmother. From there the story breaks into 3 mini-mysteries. Who killed the assistant's stepmother, what is the assistant hiding (because he refuses to help with the investigation and isn't sad his stepmother is dead) and who is the mysterious boy they find up in the mountains.
March 21, 2017
I really enjoyed this novel by Nevada Barr. The location is Glacier National Park back country, of which I have some experience. This Park is important to me as a Native Montanan. Anna applies her thorough, crime-solving mind to the murder of a female camper in the back country of the Park. There are many frightening scenes and examples of how a person's fear-fueled imagination add to the chaos generated by miscreants—both human and bear.
Read this book. You will learn new facts about Grizzly bears as Anna teams with a G-bear researcher to collect bear hair and feces. You'll get a clear idea of how this is accomplished. As always, Anna Pigeon's incredible stamina and stubbornness is a central factor in solving the mystery.
Read this book. You will learn new facts about Grizzly bears as Anna teams with a G-bear researcher to collect bear hair and feces. You'll get a clear idea of how this is accomplished. As always, Anna Pigeon's incredible stamina and stubbornness is a central factor in solving the mystery.
August 13, 2020
I really wanted to like Nevada Barr. It took a long time to get into the book. And, even then it was still only because I was committed to finish. I hate starting a book and not finishing it. I learned much about bear behavior and learned a few new words and read some very creative descriptions. I know there are some big Nevada Barr fans out there. My high school English teacher is a huge fan. And, I can see smidgeons of examples as to why that may be. But, there not enough examples to want to read another.
I've read E. L. Doctorow with the same result. Simply not my cup of tea. I'm glad I read one Nevada Barr books and won't read another. I think it completely appropriate for someone to give it a shot. They may like the flavor.
I've read E. L. Doctorow with the same result. Simply not my cup of tea. I'm glad I read one Nevada Barr books and won't read another. I think it completely appropriate for someone to give it a shot. They may like the flavor.
April 22, 2019
This one was fun because I've been to Glacier before but not in the back country. I enjoyed the bear DNA project aspect. I was surprised at the resolution and what was the cause of everything. As enjoyable as I find these books and I love getting to see the working side of the national parks they always seem to be a slow read for me.
April 29, 2022
As I'm re-reading the series from the beginning, I was a little concerned because I didn't like the books as I had years ago. So I was quite pleased to be able to give this five stars! It was absolutely wonderful!
November 25, 2017
This starts out a bit slow, but even so once it gets going it makes up for it, especially the ending. One of the best of this series.
July 17, 2022
I loved the setting and I love Anna Pigeon but the ending was so improbable that it defies credulity.
June 13, 2017
"[...] fog white as drugstore cotton began pouring down, feather-light liquid in stasis, from over the jagged mountain face to the east. Slow and silent in sinister majesty it cloaked the crags, slipped between them and flowed toward the meadows."
National Park system is one of the best things we have in this country; my wife and I have now visited 30 out of the 59 national parks in the U.S., several of them more than once, and we cherish the memories of our trips. So when I started reading Nevada Barr's Blood Lure (2001) and realized that the plot is located in Glacier National Park I got really excited. Indeed, the first part of the novel is, to me, absolutely spellbinding. Ms. Barr writes about places I vividly remember from two stays in the park: Going-to-the-Sun Road, Lake McDonald, Cathedral Peak, and others. Even Kootenai Pass makes its appearance, and I still remember the Kootenai country from Blue Heaven and from our Montana trip. The setup of the plot is absolutely first class and I was unable to put the book away until after 2 a.m.
Anita Pigeon, a ranger in the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi, is "on loan" to Glacier National Park - the U.S. part of it located in Montana as the park has also its Canadian part - where she works on a project concerning grizzly bear DNA. Ms. Pigeon, accompanied by Joan, the researcher, and Rory, a young park volunteer, embark on a five-day hike to collect bear hairs from hair traps, set up new traps and furnish them with fresh lure, a smelly blood-and-fish-guts mixture. On the second night they have a dramatic encounter with a bear; the scene is really well written. Rory disappears and, having been alerted by the park's chief ranger, Anita and Joan find a body of a victim of a brutal attack, half of whose face is gone, "cheekbone and teeth [...] exposed, bone and enamel crusted brown with dried blood."
To me the first half of the novel was a totally compulsive read: not only was I captivated with the mystery of the ravaged dead body but the park's forbidding yet magnificent landscapes that I remember from the two visits, the nature, plants and animals, came alive on the pages. Then the author acknowledges that this is a crime novel after all, and begins creating and dropping a number of unusual clues. The criminal plot rapidly grows at the expense of the national-park component of the story. We have several suspects and Ms. Pigeon's investigation even involves such distant places as Florida and Seattle. All this is pretty mundane and ordinary and the second part of the novel has not really interested me that much. The denouement has a rather low degree of plausibility but I imagine it must have been extremely hard to reconcile and successfully explain all the numerous and often contradictory clues.
Hence, even though at the beginning I was certain this would be an above-four-star novel, my hopes have been shattered by the unremarkable second half. Still, Blood Lure is a good read, and the non-mystery bits are quite interesting, like the one about bears and their food sources that very rarely include humans but often the cutworm moths. One can even find a pretty insightful sociological observation (remember, this is 2001):
Three and a half stars.
National Park system is one of the best things we have in this country; my wife and I have now visited 30 out of the 59 national parks in the U.S., several of them more than once, and we cherish the memories of our trips. So when I started reading Nevada Barr's Blood Lure (2001) and realized that the plot is located in Glacier National Park I got really excited. Indeed, the first part of the novel is, to me, absolutely spellbinding. Ms. Barr writes about places I vividly remember from two stays in the park: Going-to-the-Sun Road, Lake McDonald, Cathedral Peak, and others. Even Kootenai Pass makes its appearance, and I still remember the Kootenai country from Blue Heaven and from our Montana trip. The setup of the plot is absolutely first class and I was unable to put the book away until after 2 a.m.
Anita Pigeon, a ranger in the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi, is "on loan" to Glacier National Park - the U.S. part of it located in Montana as the park has also its Canadian part - where she works on a project concerning grizzly bear DNA. Ms. Pigeon, accompanied by Joan, the researcher, and Rory, a young park volunteer, embark on a five-day hike to collect bear hairs from hair traps, set up new traps and furnish them with fresh lure, a smelly blood-and-fish-guts mixture. On the second night they have a dramatic encounter with a bear; the scene is really well written. Rory disappears and, having been alerted by the park's chief ranger, Anita and Joan find a body of a victim of a brutal attack, half of whose face is gone, "cheekbone and teeth [...] exposed, bone and enamel crusted brown with dried blood."
To me the first half of the novel was a totally compulsive read: not only was I captivated with the mystery of the ravaged dead body but the park's forbidding yet magnificent landscapes that I remember from the two visits, the nature, plants and animals, came alive on the pages. Then the author acknowledges that this is a crime novel after all, and begins creating and dropping a number of unusual clues. The criminal plot rapidly grows at the expense of the national-park component of the story. We have several suspects and Ms. Pigeon's investigation even involves such distant places as Florida and Seattle. All this is pretty mundane and ordinary and the second part of the novel has not really interested me that much. The denouement has a rather low degree of plausibility but I imagine it must have been extremely hard to reconcile and successfully explain all the numerous and often contradictory clues.
Hence, even though at the beginning I was certain this would be an above-four-star novel, my hopes have been shattered by the unremarkable second half. Still, Blood Lure is a good read, and the non-mystery bits are quite interesting, like the one about bears and their food sources that very rarely include humans but often the cutworm moths. One can even find a pretty insightful sociological observation (remember, this is 2001):
"Americans were happily forfeiting their freedom of choice for imagined increases in security. [...] People as individuals were giving up their decision-making power because they did not want the responsibility."I have now learned that each installment of the "Anita Pigeon series" of novels takes place in a different national park. Wow! I have just found a new must-read author.
Three and a half stars.
June 18, 2025
Idk what it is about the multiples of threes of this series being so good, but #9 here is an absolute banger. I could barely put this book down- i was reading it while working out, cooking, eating, i couldn't stop devouring it with my eyes. The setting is wonderful (Glacier NP), the characters are good, the murder is very macabre and very interesting, and it has a surprisingly happy ending.
Literally my favorites of this series so far have been 3, 6 and now 9. I wonder what #12 will be like lol
Literally my favorites of this series so far have been 3, 6 and now 9. I wonder what #12 will be like lol
November 12, 2018
Another interesting book in the series.
June 27, 2020
A good set up to the mystery but a ridiculous ending. Impossible, ridiculous and very disappointing.
June 19, 2021
Way too dark for my taste.
April 4, 2025
Each time I finish an Anna Pigeon book, I think it is my favorite one. This one was no exception.
July 17, 2026
I love this series. Usually series get stagnant with the same characters and setting. Not these. And this one took me completely off guard.
Favorite passages:
“How you do?” Anna said mechanically. “Well, thank you. And yourself?” A long time had passed since anybody had bothered to finish the old-fashioned greeting formula. Evidently Rory had been raised right
No sense smelling stinky if one couldn’t be a stinker.
“I think it’d be mental cruelty to make somebody stay married to you who didn’t want to,” Rory said, sounding as if he spoke from experience.
Another terrific reason for not having children: it was so disturbing when animals ate them.
The logic of bear behavior was cheering her considerably.
Anna opted to sleep in the open. Better to face down the devil than blindly hear him circling.
Despite the fact there seemed to be a bear in Glacier with Anna’s name on it and a lunatic who sliced off women’s faces, she slept very well.
After a night of bears, a day of rain, and a defiled corpse, Anna’d not realized how starved she was—everybody was—for good news. The searchers fairly chortled and glowed over the airwaves. Everyone needed to quip, joke, to say some clever thing. Understanding this phenomenon, Ruick let the good times effervesce at the cost of radio discipline for exactly two minutes. Anna saw him look at his watch timing it. Then he cut it off with orders.
Anna was amazed that someone who could face down a chief ranger would be given the megrims by a mere grizzly bear.
His eyes lit on Anna and he made an executive decision. “You handle this,” he said and stalked off.
Harry was not pleased but he was practical.
disreputable footwear
all good manners and boyish deference now that he’d gotten his way.
The “sirs” were put to good effect. Ruick was sufficiently mollified
You need a lot more of rainbows and roses and whiskers on kittens in the daily fare.
Persons not young and not beautiful were of no interest to them.
“So why did you decide to come on a solitary backpacking trip in Glacier National Park?” For most visitors this was not a trick question. It was one they were dying to answer in great effusive gusts.
Often, in prisons it was the murderers who were chosen as trustees. Not that rare bird the serial killer, but garden-variety one-corpse-type murderers. These men and women were in reality no longer a threat to society. They had killed the person they needed to be dead and were done. Usually these were people who had killed someone they knew and, in their own minds at least, killed them for a perfectly good reason.
The country they traveled was beginning to look way too familiar to Anna. Walking through the common miracle of intensely green and living glacier lilies bursting joyously through exhausted black char, she found she looked mostly to the mountains rising above…Cleveland, Merrit, Wilbur. Wilbur, for Christ’s sake. Mundane names for objects of such staggering beauty.
goin’-visitin’ pajamas
She was amusing herself by cataloguing the gross errors committed by law enforcement on some cop show when Joan broke the long and peaceful silence.
Joan studied her as if she was a scat specimen. “How do you walk around like a normal person with such creepy thoughts in your head?” she asked finally. “It must be like being Stephen King but without the money.”
Since getting the full bore of his administrative persona was rare, Anna was flattered and mildly alarmed.
Ruick was looking at her. Dutifully she said yes to whatever it was he was expecting her to agree with.
There was just a hint of self-condemnation in his tone that led Anna to suspect Ruick felt Miranda {fire}wouldn’t have dared misbehave so grossly had his attention not been taken up elsewhere.
“The long and short of it is, I’d like you to work with me on this. Sort of Girl Friday.” Girl Friday was a significant promotion from step-’n’-fetchit, but this time Anna was offended not by the word “girl,” but the concept as a whole…sensing he’d merely been careless in his approach and was genuine in his remorse.
“I’m your girl,” she said. Ruick laughed. “Why do I doubt that?”
what did a matricide look like? In the imagination they were sly, sinister, horned and hairy.
“Why not just run her over in a crosswalk at home in Seattle?” Rory was nothing if not pragmatic about homicide.
“Rory intimated his folks were not experiencing unremitting wedded bliss, but he declined to elaborate,”
“You’re a fucking genius, Rory. You know that?” “Sorry,” he repeated sadly, and Anna wanted to strangle him.
The tenor of the country was that of growing paranoia. Americans were happily forfeiting their freedom of choice for imagined increases in security. Mandatory sentencing hobbled judges, taking the intelligence and humanity from their jobs.
People were giving up their decision-making power because they did not want the responsibility.
she studied the bulletin board above. It was full of 8x10 glossy color photographs of Ursus horribilis looking not in the least horribilis…caught the great bears in the act of frolicking…lying on their backs hugging their treasures like sea otters hugging abalone.
delightful display
McCaskil was not a good citizen, but he was apparently nonviolent.
She was always kind to animals and had been known to be kind to humans on those rare occasions when they deserved it.
Only idiots and Yankees stood anywhere but in the patches of shade provided by the gracious old oaks and pines.
To be beaten by one’s own child must be a torment only Shakespeare and God could comprehend.
He was so…so pathetic. It made me sick.” Rory looked sick. Anna felt sick. They sat in sick, wretched silence for a while
Rarely did Anna find it a burden to walk instead of ride. The mere act of putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward completely on one’s own will and strength, gave life a sense of purpose and control. And there was that adage about regular movement of the legs that stimulated orderly progression in the brain.
Snoopy was not how Anna chose to characterize herself. She much preferred the term “inquisitive” or, at worst, “impatient.” Working on other people’s timetables, waiting docilely until they were ready to feed her items of information, seemed a waste of time. This theory went a long way toward happily blinding her to such crimes as trespass and invasion of privacy.
Considering herself absolutely justified
Anna was convinced that computers, like horses, could smell fear and turn on the operator when mishandled.
I’ll let you in on any details you haven’t already found on Maryanne’s desk.” “Thanks,” Anna said sincerely. Ruick muttered something that sounded like “skin of a rhinoceros,” but, accustomed to the idiosyncrasies
Lester was doing what depressed and grieving people traditionally do: everything wrong.
The brittle safety of polite platitudes
though Anna had come to accept it intellectually, viscerally it still pissed her off.
Ruick retreated with unflattering speed back to the safety of his lonely chair.
Till she sorted out her bits of hair and scat, Joan was useless for any other topic of conversation.
hiking into the wilderness with a potential murderer was not what grated on Anna’s nerves.
perhaps at menopause, when she underwent reverse adolescence, she, too, would become uniquely dangerous
“Howdy, howdy,” she said, just to be irritating. “Oh. It’s you,” he said repressively.
I like being cold. And I like being alone.
within an inch of their tawdry little lives
If people could go insane, who was Anna to say an animal couldn’t do likewise? Probably an animal smarter than the rest. Too smart for its own good. “Get thee behind me, Dean Koontz,” she said aloud, realizing she’d slipped into nightmare in the midst of the most stunningly beautiful of days.
The true charm was being on horseback under a fathomless sky with nobody to answer to for the entirety of a splendid day.
Park rangers were subject to the ailments of the general populace: prejudice, stupidity, small-mindedness, malice; but she had never known a single one she suspected of littering.
was the sum total of excitement.
At length, enjoying a childish morbidity, she lay down in the place where Carolyn had been dumped
Free from what she expected to see, Anna finally saw what was actually there.
Deerflies with jaws like airborne Chihuahuas
With understanding came fear’s cold touch
Fear was the root of all evil. The others could be tracked to it. Greed was fear of want in pathological form. Lies, fear of being discovered for who one was, punished for what one had done.
She would not be robbed of that which made all else endurable, the peace and perfection of the natural world.
There was something about this case that was causing her to isolate. Anna snorted. Sensing an equine conversation in the offing, Ponce snorted back.
“This trap was pretty paltry pickin’s,” she said.
“Shall we tell her?” Buck asked. “I think not,” Joan said. “You don’t know her like I do. She is exhibiting an uncharacteristic enjoyment in bipeds.
Glacier’s got nothing in the way of gold, silver, precious stones, gas, oil. One of the reasons it’s been left alone is nobody ever figured out how to make any money out of it.”
She couldn’t figure out if this particular murder had too many clues and too many suspects, or too few.
some of the most courageous choices she’d seen upper management make were those made not to pour technology on a problem, not to bring in guns and dogs…but to fight nature on nature’s terms. Or, more courageous still, not to fight at all, to let the fire burn, the river change course, the historic crumble without replacement. Often enough to make it an act of bravery, these administrators lost their careers. The public hated nature when she wasn’t in their control.
He’d probably end his days as a chief ranger at some Civil War battlefield two acres across. Anna respected him for it.
Where the bug hunting had been particularly good
In Mississippi, Anna’d dealt with a woman who believed herself to be the mother of eight children, all penguins.
They had only Rory’s word for it that there’d been a bear and Rory was not exactly the poster boy for mental stability. A deep and rotten core of fear opened in Anna, making her nauseated.
It must have looked particularly mothy to the guy.
Anna’s life now existed at the whim and pleasure of the sow. Realizing that produced an odd calm. When there was nothing to be done, one was free of the responsibility to think of how to do it.
Anna never looked back, never fell and never stopped
For once the wind wasn’t blowing. The silence of the morning was so absolute…she would have suspected she’d gone deaf overnight. Nowhere was the sound of birds waking, water running, squirrels doing whatever it was squirrels did at this hour of the morning.
Her guess was the roller of rocks and filleter of faces had moved on after using the time she’d cowered in her crevice
the unmitigated gall to bring a dog into a NPS-designated Wilderness Area? If they ever caught him, in addition to “murder in the first degree,” she’d make sure Harry wrote him up for “dog off leash.”
For the first time in her life, Anna wished she’d had children so she could trade her firstborn for a drink. The hikers were glad to have the privilege of rescuing a ranger.
It was about the best description of a person Anna had ever gotten in her years as a law enforcement officer. These women were of that rare breed that saw what they were looking at.
Full of questions and needing to pester somebody
Lester was there. He sat on a rock, doing nothing. So seldom do people actually do nothing that to see it creates an impression of deadness.
If he’d appeared old and sick and gray when they’d met, he looked three days dead now.
It was not that she was without compassion, at least she liked to think she wasn’t
pictured him…as an old tomcat, battered and beaten till it could barely move, a cat who’d been so misused, when approached by a human hand, it could no longer even hiss but only close its eyes, wait for the blow and hope, this time, it would kill him.
Law enforcement officers do not like fairy stories
Looked at in the harsh light of reason, the benevolent bear spirit that brought drinking water to lost souls was pretty irrational.
But you and I both know what they’ll find.” “What I found,” Anna agreed, “less half a peanut.”
Anna didn’t like it. Intuition told her there were connections, somehow, somewhere, between the seemingly unconnected events…a Florida con man, a promiscuous Seattle divorce lawyer and a mysterious young man with a chain-link belt and a beautiful smile, were related to punctured water bottles, army cutworm moths, glacier lilies and murder.
Still, she was old-fashioned enough to feel adultery should be done on the sly, in great secrecy, and that it behooved the adulterers to feel ashamed and guilty. The libertine sentiments of Ms. Cuckor and the late Mrs. Van Slyke left her with a sense of sleaze that was unsettling.
That he’d registered for a permit at all suggested that either his pursuits were innocent or, given he was well versed in the ways of crime and law enforcement, he knew in obeying the minor rules one was far more apt to get away with the major infractions. A significant number of felons were rotting in the federal penitentiaries because they got pulled over for failing to signal on a right turn and then one thing led to another.
The telephone operator Anna had hooked up with was probably as close to a saint as the phone company had on its rosters.
Anna had what she wanted but she didn’t know what she had.
Ms. Cuckor had her own brand of professional ethics. She’d been only too happy to share in gory detail the fact that her boss had had sex with all creatures great and small.
the whole truth, nothing but the truth and damn little of that.” “I’m Officer Anna Pigeon investigating the death of Carolyn Van Slyke. Could you answer a few questions for me?” A pause, then a careful voice as devoid of regional inflections as that of a radio announcer said, “Ask your questions.” Anna noted the lack of commitment to answering them.
There would be no softening up or slithering around Claude. Anna cut to it. “We can’t divulge any client information.” “The fact that a person has engaged the services of an attorney does not fall under attorney-client privilege,” Anna said. So often the attorney, doctor, priest and whoever-else client privilege was claimed for wasn’t for the protection of clients. It was claimed, legally or not, because people were either too lazy to bother giving information to help out the police. Anna suspected Claude claimed it to avoid involvement and work. She waited through a clearly audible sigh. I’ll put you through to the secretary. Give her the names. She will tell you if any of them have engaged the professional services of Carolyn Van Slyke in the past year. She won’t go back further than that and she will not tell you anything else.” “Thank you,” Anna said but he’d already put her on hold. Minutes later, when she was beginning to think she’d been put on hold to grow old and die, Francine came on the line. She was businesslike to the point of rudeness.
“No persons by those names have contacted Ms. Van Slyke in her professional capacity,” Francine said mimicking an automaton. Had the sentence with its convoluted precision come from someone else, Anna might have suspected them of hiding something. From Francine it just sounded petty and pompous.
A pleasant young man, at least he sounded young and handsome and virile but may well have been a nasty old poop with a nice voice
She’d verified that Lester’s wife was indeed the queen of sluts.
Shuffling the crazies back into the pile
Things were not necessarily untrue simply because they were unbelievable.
Home for so many years had been wherever she fed the cat.
she found she was disappointed in the out-of-doors as well. The realization was so alarming she stopped walking. She’d grown disenchanted with the natural world because it had been behaving in what seemed an unnatural manner, and disappointed with the world of people because it behaved precisely as she’d come to expect it would. This way madness lies, she thought and took some time to realign her brain.
Anna believed there were those who belonged on the Better Off Dead list.
“I’m glad you’re back. We’ve been needing a treat.” Anna was considered a treat. Things were looking up.
“There’s always room for another idiot,” Joan admitted.
when it came to adolescent boys she saw through the eyes of a mother. Anna’s were more akin to those of a parole officer.
around a place that was only flat in Joan’s imagination
his great head swaying from side to side as tiny bear thoughts in his small bear brain shook into alignment
First came thought, a sense of mind creeping forth from a place far more distant than sleep. She knew she was thirsty and she knew she was cold. Opening her eyes, she knew she was blind or had gone to a place where sight did not matter. It wasn’t that Anna did not care, it was that she could not think, so fear didn’t follow.
A scared crazy man, with a rifle and hostages. In law enforcement this was what was referred to as a worst-case scenario.
he hollered, “Ouch!” The wretched rotten boy actually said ouch.
Writhing across the slippery bed of needles, as single-minded as a sidewinder…Crablike, snakelike, scuttling like a scorpion, hoping like any low and little thing to strike quickly enough and with enough venom to survive one more day.
“Don’t shoot him,” the boy said, as if Anna could have destroyed that much beauty even to save her own worthless hide. “His name is Balthazar.” “How do you do?” Anna croaked idiotically. To her amazement the bear raised a single huge paw to shake and she laughed, sounding, at least in her ears, a little on the hysterical side.
given that Rory’s skin was still whole and he was still in it
Maniac turned craven, the man actually looked rather pathetic oozing toward the woods and temporary freedom. Being captured by a crippled-up lady ranger would only add to his humiliation.
The boy sat with his arms around his knees looking weary and relieved and terribly sad.
“You don’t let anybody shoot them in the park,” Geoffrey said simply. The logic was indisputable. One does not take a friend to live where murderers are waiting to take his life.
McCaskil felt bound to pipe up. Reassured by the company of others, safe from the bear and, in a strange way, safe within his bonds from the responsibility for decision or action, William McCaskil was recovering his equilibrium. Anna liked him better mute and cowering.
He’d have been grown when Geoffrey was young but evidently visited Mom often enough to torment a little boy and a little bear.
You’re a son-of-a-bitch, McCaskil. Be nice and shut up
When he smells him he knows something bad is happening and he goes back to bear rules to save himself.” “Fucking menace,” McCaskil growled. Balthazar growled back and McCaskil shut up.
Some tricks he taught himself and just does them for fun when he’s happy. He likes to juggle…Sometimes he just starts in to dance even when there’s no music.
“This whole thing has been stressful for Balthazar. I mean, I’d never been out of Florida but Balthazar’s never been anywhere. The other bears scare him. Deer scare him. He almost ran off that cliff up by the army moth place. He’s never been in a world that had cliffs in its floor.
“I’d read a person can live a long time without food but not without water. I’m sorry about the bottle. Balthazar got to playing with it. We’ll buy you a new one.”
they’d have to shoot through the person of Geoffrey Micou before they got to the shaggy body of his brother.
He was a greedy immoral man pushed to violence by his own fears.
“What is it?” Thigpen asked. “Shit,” Anna said happily.
Favorite passages:
“How you do?” Anna said mechanically. “Well, thank you. And yourself?” A long time had passed since anybody had bothered to finish the old-fashioned greeting formula. Evidently Rory had been raised right
No sense smelling stinky if one couldn’t be a stinker.
“I think it’d be mental cruelty to make somebody stay married to you who didn’t want to,” Rory said, sounding as if he spoke from experience.
Another terrific reason for not having children: it was so disturbing when animals ate them.
The logic of bear behavior was cheering her considerably.
Anna opted to sleep in the open. Better to face down the devil than blindly hear him circling.
Despite the fact there seemed to be a bear in Glacier with Anna’s name on it and a lunatic who sliced off women’s faces, she slept very well.
After a night of bears, a day of rain, and a defiled corpse, Anna’d not realized how starved she was—everybody was—for good news. The searchers fairly chortled and glowed over the airwaves. Everyone needed to quip, joke, to say some clever thing. Understanding this phenomenon, Ruick let the good times effervesce at the cost of radio discipline for exactly two minutes. Anna saw him look at his watch timing it. Then he cut it off with orders.
Anna was amazed that someone who could face down a chief ranger would be given the megrims by a mere grizzly bear.
His eyes lit on Anna and he made an executive decision. “You handle this,” he said and stalked off.
Harry was not pleased but he was practical.
disreputable footwear
all good manners and boyish deference now that he’d gotten his way.
The “sirs” were put to good effect. Ruick was sufficiently mollified
You need a lot more of rainbows and roses and whiskers on kittens in the daily fare.
Persons not young and not beautiful were of no interest to them.
“So why did you decide to come on a solitary backpacking trip in Glacier National Park?” For most visitors this was not a trick question. It was one they were dying to answer in great effusive gusts.
Often, in prisons it was the murderers who were chosen as trustees. Not that rare bird the serial killer, but garden-variety one-corpse-type murderers. These men and women were in reality no longer a threat to society. They had killed the person they needed to be dead and were done. Usually these were people who had killed someone they knew and, in their own minds at least, killed them for a perfectly good reason.
The country they traveled was beginning to look way too familiar to Anna. Walking through the common miracle of intensely green and living glacier lilies bursting joyously through exhausted black char, she found she looked mostly to the mountains rising above…Cleveland, Merrit, Wilbur. Wilbur, for Christ’s sake. Mundane names for objects of such staggering beauty.
goin’-visitin’ pajamas
She was amusing herself by cataloguing the gross errors committed by law enforcement on some cop show when Joan broke the long and peaceful silence.
Joan studied her as if she was a scat specimen. “How do you walk around like a normal person with such creepy thoughts in your head?” she asked finally. “It must be like being Stephen King but without the money.”
Since getting the full bore of his administrative persona was rare, Anna was flattered and mildly alarmed.
Ruick was looking at her. Dutifully she said yes to whatever it was he was expecting her to agree with.
There was just a hint of self-condemnation in his tone that led Anna to suspect Ruick felt Miranda {fire}wouldn’t have dared misbehave so grossly had his attention not been taken up elsewhere.
“The long and short of it is, I’d like you to work with me on this. Sort of Girl Friday.” Girl Friday was a significant promotion from step-’n’-fetchit, but this time Anna was offended not by the word “girl,” but the concept as a whole…sensing he’d merely been careless in his approach and was genuine in his remorse.
“I’m your girl,” she said. Ruick laughed. “Why do I doubt that?”
what did a matricide look like? In the imagination they were sly, sinister, horned and hairy.
“Why not just run her over in a crosswalk at home in Seattle?” Rory was nothing if not pragmatic about homicide.
“Rory intimated his folks were not experiencing unremitting wedded bliss, but he declined to elaborate,”
“You’re a fucking genius, Rory. You know that?” “Sorry,” he repeated sadly, and Anna wanted to strangle him.
The tenor of the country was that of growing paranoia. Americans were happily forfeiting their freedom of choice for imagined increases in security. Mandatory sentencing hobbled judges, taking the intelligence and humanity from their jobs.
People were giving up their decision-making power because they did not want the responsibility.
she studied the bulletin board above. It was full of 8x10 glossy color photographs of Ursus horribilis looking not in the least horribilis…caught the great bears in the act of frolicking…lying on their backs hugging their treasures like sea otters hugging abalone.
delightful display
McCaskil was not a good citizen, but he was apparently nonviolent.
She was always kind to animals and had been known to be kind to humans on those rare occasions when they deserved it.
Only idiots and Yankees stood anywhere but in the patches of shade provided by the gracious old oaks and pines.
To be beaten by one’s own child must be a torment only Shakespeare and God could comprehend.
He was so…so pathetic. It made me sick.” Rory looked sick. Anna felt sick. They sat in sick, wretched silence for a while
Rarely did Anna find it a burden to walk instead of ride. The mere act of putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward completely on one’s own will and strength, gave life a sense of purpose and control. And there was that adage about regular movement of the legs that stimulated orderly progression in the brain.
Snoopy was not how Anna chose to characterize herself. She much preferred the term “inquisitive” or, at worst, “impatient.” Working on other people’s timetables, waiting docilely until they were ready to feed her items of information, seemed a waste of time. This theory went a long way toward happily blinding her to such crimes as trespass and invasion of privacy.
Considering herself absolutely justified
Anna was convinced that computers, like horses, could smell fear and turn on the operator when mishandled.
I’ll let you in on any details you haven’t already found on Maryanne’s desk.” “Thanks,” Anna said sincerely. Ruick muttered something that sounded like “skin of a rhinoceros,” but, accustomed to the idiosyncrasies
Lester was doing what depressed and grieving people traditionally do: everything wrong.
The brittle safety of polite platitudes
though Anna had come to accept it intellectually, viscerally it still pissed her off.
Ruick retreated with unflattering speed back to the safety of his lonely chair.
Till she sorted out her bits of hair and scat, Joan was useless for any other topic of conversation.
hiking into the wilderness with a potential murderer was not what grated on Anna’s nerves.
perhaps at menopause, when she underwent reverse adolescence, she, too, would become uniquely dangerous
“Howdy, howdy,” she said, just to be irritating. “Oh. It’s you,” he said repressively.
I like being cold. And I like being alone.
within an inch of their tawdry little lives
If people could go insane, who was Anna to say an animal couldn’t do likewise? Probably an animal smarter than the rest. Too smart for its own good. “Get thee behind me, Dean Koontz,” she said aloud, realizing she’d slipped into nightmare in the midst of the most stunningly beautiful of days.
The true charm was being on horseback under a fathomless sky with nobody to answer to for the entirety of a splendid day.
Park rangers were subject to the ailments of the general populace: prejudice, stupidity, small-mindedness, malice; but she had never known a single one she suspected of littering.
was the sum total of excitement.
At length, enjoying a childish morbidity, she lay down in the place where Carolyn had been dumped
Free from what she expected to see, Anna finally saw what was actually there.
Deerflies with jaws like airborne Chihuahuas
With understanding came fear’s cold touch
Fear was the root of all evil. The others could be tracked to it. Greed was fear of want in pathological form. Lies, fear of being discovered for who one was, punished for what one had done.
She would not be robbed of that which made all else endurable, the peace and perfection of the natural world.
There was something about this case that was causing her to isolate. Anna snorted. Sensing an equine conversation in the offing, Ponce snorted back.
“This trap was pretty paltry pickin’s,” she said.
“Shall we tell her?” Buck asked. “I think not,” Joan said. “You don’t know her like I do. She is exhibiting an uncharacteristic enjoyment in bipeds.
Glacier’s got nothing in the way of gold, silver, precious stones, gas, oil. One of the reasons it’s been left alone is nobody ever figured out how to make any money out of it.”
She couldn’t figure out if this particular murder had too many clues and too many suspects, or too few.
some of the most courageous choices she’d seen upper management make were those made not to pour technology on a problem, not to bring in guns and dogs…but to fight nature on nature’s terms. Or, more courageous still, not to fight at all, to let the fire burn, the river change course, the historic crumble without replacement. Often enough to make it an act of bravery, these administrators lost their careers. The public hated nature when she wasn’t in their control.
He’d probably end his days as a chief ranger at some Civil War battlefield two acres across. Anna respected him for it.
Where the bug hunting had been particularly good
In Mississippi, Anna’d dealt with a woman who believed herself to be the mother of eight children, all penguins.
They had only Rory’s word for it that there’d been a bear and Rory was not exactly the poster boy for mental stability. A deep and rotten core of fear opened in Anna, making her nauseated.
It must have looked particularly mothy to the guy.
Anna’s life now existed at the whim and pleasure of the sow. Realizing that produced an odd calm. When there was nothing to be done, one was free of the responsibility to think of how to do it.
Anna never looked back, never fell and never stopped
For once the wind wasn’t blowing. The silence of the morning was so absolute…she would have suspected she’d gone deaf overnight. Nowhere was the sound of birds waking, water running, squirrels doing whatever it was squirrels did at this hour of the morning.
Her guess was the roller of rocks and filleter of faces had moved on after using the time she’d cowered in her crevice
the unmitigated gall to bring a dog into a NPS-designated Wilderness Area? If they ever caught him, in addition to “murder in the first degree,” she’d make sure Harry wrote him up for “dog off leash.”
For the first time in her life, Anna wished she’d had children so she could trade her firstborn for a drink. The hikers were glad to have the privilege of rescuing a ranger.
It was about the best description of a person Anna had ever gotten in her years as a law enforcement officer. These women were of that rare breed that saw what they were looking at.
Full of questions and needing to pester somebody
Lester was there. He sat on a rock, doing nothing. So seldom do people actually do nothing that to see it creates an impression of deadness.
If he’d appeared old and sick and gray when they’d met, he looked three days dead now.
It was not that she was without compassion, at least she liked to think she wasn’t
pictured him…as an old tomcat, battered and beaten till it could barely move, a cat who’d been so misused, when approached by a human hand, it could no longer even hiss but only close its eyes, wait for the blow and hope, this time, it would kill him.
Law enforcement officers do not like fairy stories
Looked at in the harsh light of reason, the benevolent bear spirit that brought drinking water to lost souls was pretty irrational.
But you and I both know what they’ll find.” “What I found,” Anna agreed, “less half a peanut.”
Anna didn’t like it. Intuition told her there were connections, somehow, somewhere, between the seemingly unconnected events…a Florida con man, a promiscuous Seattle divorce lawyer and a mysterious young man with a chain-link belt and a beautiful smile, were related to punctured water bottles, army cutworm moths, glacier lilies and murder.
Still, she was old-fashioned enough to feel adultery should be done on the sly, in great secrecy, and that it behooved the adulterers to feel ashamed and guilty. The libertine sentiments of Ms. Cuckor and the late Mrs. Van Slyke left her with a sense of sleaze that was unsettling.
That he’d registered for a permit at all suggested that either his pursuits were innocent or, given he was well versed in the ways of crime and law enforcement, he knew in obeying the minor rules one was far more apt to get away with the major infractions. A significant number of felons were rotting in the federal penitentiaries because they got pulled over for failing to signal on a right turn and then one thing led to another.
The telephone operator Anna had hooked up with was probably as close to a saint as the phone company had on its rosters.
Anna had what she wanted but she didn’t know what she had.
Ms. Cuckor had her own brand of professional ethics. She’d been only too happy to share in gory detail the fact that her boss had had sex with all creatures great and small.
the whole truth, nothing but the truth and damn little of that.” “I’m Officer Anna Pigeon investigating the death of Carolyn Van Slyke. Could you answer a few questions for me?” A pause, then a careful voice as devoid of regional inflections as that of a radio announcer said, “Ask your questions.” Anna noted the lack of commitment to answering them.
There would be no softening up or slithering around Claude. Anna cut to it. “We can’t divulge any client information.” “The fact that a person has engaged the services of an attorney does not fall under attorney-client privilege,” Anna said. So often the attorney, doctor, priest and whoever-else client privilege was claimed for wasn’t for the protection of clients. It was claimed, legally or not, because people were either too lazy to bother giving information to help out the police. Anna suspected Claude claimed it to avoid involvement and work. She waited through a clearly audible sigh. I’ll put you through to the secretary. Give her the names. She will tell you if any of them have engaged the professional services of Carolyn Van Slyke in the past year. She won’t go back further than that and she will not tell you anything else.” “Thank you,” Anna said but he’d already put her on hold. Minutes later, when she was beginning to think she’d been put on hold to grow old and die, Francine came on the line. She was businesslike to the point of rudeness.
“No persons by those names have contacted Ms. Van Slyke in her professional capacity,” Francine said mimicking an automaton. Had the sentence with its convoluted precision come from someone else, Anna might have suspected them of hiding something. From Francine it just sounded petty and pompous.
A pleasant young man, at least he sounded young and handsome and virile but may well have been a nasty old poop with a nice voice
She’d verified that Lester’s wife was indeed the queen of sluts.
Shuffling the crazies back into the pile
Things were not necessarily untrue simply because they were unbelievable.
Home for so many years had been wherever she fed the cat.
she found she was disappointed in the out-of-doors as well. The realization was so alarming she stopped walking. She’d grown disenchanted with the natural world because it had been behaving in what seemed an unnatural manner, and disappointed with the world of people because it behaved precisely as she’d come to expect it would. This way madness lies, she thought and took some time to realign her brain.
Anna believed there were those who belonged on the Better Off Dead list.
“I’m glad you’re back. We’ve been needing a treat.” Anna was considered a treat. Things were looking up.
“There’s always room for another idiot,” Joan admitted.
when it came to adolescent boys she saw through the eyes of a mother. Anna’s were more akin to those of a parole officer.
around a place that was only flat in Joan’s imagination
his great head swaying from side to side as tiny bear thoughts in his small bear brain shook into alignment
First came thought, a sense of mind creeping forth from a place far more distant than sleep. She knew she was thirsty and she knew she was cold. Opening her eyes, she knew she was blind or had gone to a place where sight did not matter. It wasn’t that Anna did not care, it was that she could not think, so fear didn’t follow.
A scared crazy man, with a rifle and hostages. In law enforcement this was what was referred to as a worst-case scenario.
he hollered, “Ouch!” The wretched rotten boy actually said ouch.
Writhing across the slippery bed of needles, as single-minded as a sidewinder…Crablike, snakelike, scuttling like a scorpion, hoping like any low and little thing to strike quickly enough and with enough venom to survive one more day.
“Don’t shoot him,” the boy said, as if Anna could have destroyed that much beauty even to save her own worthless hide. “His name is Balthazar.” “How do you do?” Anna croaked idiotically. To her amazement the bear raised a single huge paw to shake and she laughed, sounding, at least in her ears, a little on the hysterical side.
given that Rory’s skin was still whole and he was still in it
Maniac turned craven, the man actually looked rather pathetic oozing toward the woods and temporary freedom. Being captured by a crippled-up lady ranger would only add to his humiliation.
The boy sat with his arms around his knees looking weary and relieved and terribly sad.
“You don’t let anybody shoot them in the park,” Geoffrey said simply. The logic was indisputable. One does not take a friend to live where murderers are waiting to take his life.
McCaskil felt bound to pipe up. Reassured by the company of others, safe from the bear and, in a strange way, safe within his bonds from the responsibility for decision or action, William McCaskil was recovering his equilibrium. Anna liked him better mute and cowering.
He’d have been grown when Geoffrey was young but evidently visited Mom often enough to torment a little boy and a little bear.
You’re a son-of-a-bitch, McCaskil. Be nice and shut up
When he smells him he knows something bad is happening and he goes back to bear rules to save himself.” “Fucking menace,” McCaskil growled. Balthazar growled back and McCaskil shut up.
Some tricks he taught himself and just does them for fun when he’s happy. He likes to juggle…Sometimes he just starts in to dance even when there’s no music.
“This whole thing has been stressful for Balthazar. I mean, I’d never been out of Florida but Balthazar’s never been anywhere. The other bears scare him. Deer scare him. He almost ran off that cliff up by the army moth place. He’s never been in a world that had cliffs in its floor.
“I’d read a person can live a long time without food but not without water. I’m sorry about the bottle. Balthazar got to playing with it. We’ll buy you a new one.”
they’d have to shoot through the person of Geoffrey Micou before they got to the shaggy body of his brother.
He was a greedy immoral man pushed to violence by his own fears.
“What is it?” Thigpen asked. “Shit,” Anna said happily.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 24, 2026
This was the strangest Anna Pigeon so far! Interesting twists and turns.
November 8, 2020
My least favorite of the Anna Pigeon books. I still learned a lot about bears and, as always, enjoyed Anna.
September 20, 2026
“In the backcountry was only the often pitiless but never malicious work of the gods.” I liked that the main internal conflict in this book, for Anna, was that the thing that was usually her respite- being out in the wilderness of the backcountry- has seemingly “turned on her.” The quote about the backcountry being “pitiless but never malicious” is a good way to summarize this internal conflict, because it describes the essence of the natural world; it does not care about us humans, but it also is never intentionally malicious (like humans can be). So when Anna survives a bear attack that feels intentionally malicious, it threatens one of her core beliefs about the world. Obviously there has to be a murder investigation thrown into the mix because these are mystery/crime novels, but I found myself much more enthralled by Anna’s internal conflict: how to handle one’s core beliefs and values being threatened and questioned.
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