Customer Reviews

Borderline (Center Point Platinum Mystery (Large Print))

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(26)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have to say I am a fan after reading my first Anna Pigeon novel. On a forced vacation after a violent incident in her last case, park ranger Anna and her husband, Paul, have signed on to a river rafting excursion in southwest Texas' Big Bend National Park, where the Rio Grande skirts the Texas-Mexico border. The adventure begun simply enough with a few college students and a capable guide, Anna and Paul are enjoying a short hiatus from their usual responsibilities. When a series of misjudgments leaves the raft at the mercy of a flooding river, the rafters are cast ashore with few provisions, their outing become suddenly more perilous. But when a sniper starts shooting at the party, the trip is run-for-your-life dangerous.

Her professional instincts reawakened, Anna is challenged even more by the discovery of the body of a pregnant woman trapped in the debris of the Rio Grande. Horror-stricken, Anna delivers the woman's unborn baby, the tiny child awakening a maternal instinct in the pragmatic Anna that amazes her. But there is no time for personal indulgence, the child's life at risk as the stranded rafters desperately climb to safety in spite of the sniper. Nearly safe, Anna and Paul stumble upon another surprise, unsure if they face friend or foe. Clearly, in Barr's novels, expedience requires quick reactions. Anna must trust her survival instincts if she is to save herself, the infant and her companions.

Meanwhile, a political rally in the park serves as a venue for Huston mayor Judith Pierson to announce her run for the governorship of Texas. A feisty and savvy politician, Pierson is a conservative Ann Richards, border issues high on her list of priorities. By Judith's side is ex-secret service agent Darden White. A long personal relationship with the mayor alerts Daren to Judith's every mood. Currently he fears there is trouble in paradise, Judith and her husband having difficulty hiding the rancor between them. Watching all with a trained eye, Darden is unnerved by Judith's actions, his concern exacerbated by the announcement of the fatal shootings and the rescue on the Rio Grande.

Soon all are embroiled in a collision of political agendas and the safety of a newborn, a maze of personal agendas as opportunistic politics intrude on the environment's pristine beauty. Barr rises above petty political positions, creating nuanced characters and the grandeur of the Big Bend National Park, violence and revenge sharply contrasted against nature's stark indifference. The beauty of this untamed wilderness is all the more poignant for the trail of dead bodies in the wake of Anna's delivery of an innocent child. Anna Pigeon is a spunky protagonist, a woman who values herself and the world she inhabits. In this well-rounded character, a woman of her generation, Barr puts the human back in nature. Luan Gaines/2009.

I found Borderline to be much more of a page-turner than the previous Anna Pigeon mystery, Winter Study. It was also less violent (a good thing). I have been a fan since the first book in the series and recommend reading them in order. Anna has indeed matured and grows more complex and interesting with each book. Nevada Barr is one of the few authors that I follow closely; I buy her books as soon as they come out and have never been disappointed.

I am a big fan of the Anna Pigeon series but this one gets a mixed review. The first half, about Anna's rafting trip and her struggle with PTSD, is compelling and pushes the story along like a raft in whitewater. The second
plot, surrounding a politician's ambition and her relationship with one of her bodyguards, brings that raft up against a boulder and the raft starts to swamp. Fans of the series will enjoy it nonetheless, but first time readers should start with one of the other books in the series!

I'm an avid follower of Anna Pigeon's exploits who was disappointed in the latest book in the series. Barr's plots aren't her strongest suit, but this one was truly out there. I had a very hard time believing the motives for many of the characters' actions. While Barr does her usual great job describing the physical setting for the novel, along with Anna's inner thoughts, this believable depiction is at odds with most other parts of the story.

As usual, we are expected to believe that Anna (and others) are somehow physically strong enought to endure multiple injuries, fatigue, lack of food and water, etc. without succumbing to their attackers. That's OK -- most male protagonists in crime novels have to do the same and as a 50-something female, I enjoy reading about a middle-aged woman who isn't a couch potato. But this time I was annoyed by Barr's inaccuracies about the subject of the book: a river trip. She has a whitewater outfitter ignoring a basic rule of wilderness river travel by floating the Rio Grande in a single raft, with no other craft for safety or backup. No NPS concessionaire would be allowed to do that on a river with any hazards. Then she repeatedly confuses oars with paddles. Along with this, the WW guide seems unfamiliar with the river's flow stages and rapids. She does not have much of a plan for the float trip, e.g. one that would allow for sufficient rest, for scouting rapids, or that involved the kind of pre-trip basic safety training the outfitter's insurance company would mandate, as would NPS and the guide's professional association. The rafting accident that follows, while necessary as a plot device, is difficult for this reader to believe -- especially given Anna's substantial experience.

Ms. Barr, please bring back more believable story lines. And we're still waiting for a book set in Alaska, where over half the land NPS manages is located! I'm sure Kate Shugak wouldn't mid too much if Anna spent some time mushing near gold claims in DENA, or sea kayaking among cruise ships and humpbacks at GLBA, or dealing with end-of-roaders in McCarthy (WRST).

Can't Anna Pigeon get a break? The answer is an apparent no as Nevada Barr really puts the Park Ranger through another series of harrowing events. Anna, on administrative leave, decides to accompany her husband on a white water rafting trip. The river is on the BORDERLINE of Texas and Mexico. Through a series of misfortunes, Anna soon finds herself dodging bullets.

It's not necessary to have read other book in the series, but fans will Anna Pigeon's progression. She's becomes darker, cynical and paranoid. Readers are also treated to Anna Pigeon's maternal side. Barr again lets the story feed off of the park setting. The plot was slightly predictable, but this novel delivers thrill a page action and brims with tension. If you haven't read the series, this is an excellent place to start.

THE SETUP
Anna (a National Parks Service policewoman) is on vacation with her policeman/priest husband, Paul, in Big Bend National Park, Texas. After losing their raft while rafting down the Rio Grande, the group discover a dying pregnant woman. After her death, Anna performs an emergency cesarian to save the baby. As if things are not bad enough the river begins to rise, and the party leader is shot trying to climb to the canyon rim to phone for help. Even so, they are force to climb to the rim in the dark. At the rim they find, and scuffle with, a Texas Ranger, Freddy Martinez, assigned to the Park. In the meantime, Judith Pierson (the mayor of Houston, running for the Governorship) is having a political rally at the Park. Judith's husband announces that he is leaving her for his pregnant mistress. That's the setup.

COMMENTS
I am a voracious reader, reading over 100 novels/year. I have learned that there are fundamental differences between how men and women tell stories, even within the limited genre of action/mystery novels. Women, usually being more social and perceptive, are interested in the interpersonal relationships and emotional conflicts even of people they do not like. Men are generally interested only in characters with whom they can relate---who are like themselves, or like people they have known, or who are people they would welcome as friends, or characters they find sexually attractive. Women fill their lives with "secrets" about both friends and enemies. Men fill their lives with "useful information"--such as how to fix a refrigerator, and private emotions about the people they care about. Love, hate, jealousy, and revenge are the prime motivating factors in most novels by women. Personal honor, justice, greed, and lust are the prime motivating factors in most novels written by men. Novels by women are usually weak on plot. Novels by men are usually weak on character development.

As a result, men are a difficult audience for female authors (moreso than the reverse). From a guy's point of view, "novels" written by some female authors are plotless stuctureless gossip-sessions (which some women may enjoy, but men do not). Regretfully, I (and I'm sure many other male readers) have learned to eschew many female authors.

Although I would never suspect Nevada Barr to be male, she has a keen sense of plot and action and a good understanding of the male psyche. Indeed grown-up tomboy Anna's occasional difficulties in relating to the "girly" female world is something male readers readily relate to. Barr portrays emotions and personal conflicts convincingly and compellingly. Sometimes she dwells on "female angst", which female readers will appreciate and male readers can file away as "useful information". Although fictional, Barr's alter ego, Anna Pigeon, is a woman I would value as a friend--and that is true of many of Barr's characters.

VERDICT
With each successive novel Barr is getting better. In my opinion "Borderline" is her best so far, and that is saying quite alot. The conclusion of "Borderline" is a bit predictable, but satisfyingly so.

We're long time fans of Nevada Barr and her noir park ranger Anna Pigeon. This book is a real page turner, well written and lots of action amid a beautiful national park. It is a welcome departure from the winter's Isle Royale nightmare adventures of Barr's prior book. The warmth of the Texas sun shines on Anna's darkened spirit as she manages another astonishing series of highly creative adventures, spiced with Texas politics, homage to women and children, and the mighty Rio Grande. Borderline is a good read.

I've written reviews for several Nevada Barr novels over the years, and they've all be 5-stars: not this time.

In the other Anna Pigeon novels, the plot builds through the various day-to-day activities of the NPS Ranger, allowing the reader to become familiar with the National Park du jour and the secondary characters. Here Barr breaks that pattern. The raft trip ordeal comes first and we learn about the other stuff on the run. This makes for a fabulous read for the first 100 pages, but leaves the reader with the post-adrenalin blahs for the next 100 pages of nuts and bolts talking. And more talking.

Nor is plot structure the only change. While Barr generally gives us access to the minds of various villains throughout the series, it's always in a very limited way and only to supply elements of the plot that would otherwise require pages of awkward narration. Here we spend a great deal of time in the mind of Darden, an ambiguous character, and the result is infelicitous. While Darden is well drawn, his sub-plot isn't, and we get way too much of both. By using the Darden narrative to break up Anna's compelling adventures, Barr invites us to dislike the man. As other reviewers note, the whole political plot is less interesting - much less interesting -- than the river plot and the link between them is, frankly, implausible.

Barr's writing - always solid and sometimes outstanding in the other novels -- isn't up to her own standard here. For example: she has developed a lamentable fondness for the pretentious use of "one" as a pronoun. Non-Brits should avoid this construction like the plague. At its best, the pronoun can set a quaint and or campy tone for a Jeeves sort of narrative, but that's hardly appropriate for south Texas. And, sadly, Barr makes the mistake of every overambitious college sophomore, starting a sentence using "one," but sliding into the ubiquitous "they" before she reaches the end. Gruesome. Between the writing problems and the top-heavy political plot, the middle of the book sinks into the silt of boredom.

It sinks into boredom, only to be swamped by hyperbole.

One of the things I most admire about the series is its physicality. Barr puts Anna in physically demanding confrontations, in life-threatening conflicts with the elements, in fights for her life. Anna is the most-scarred woman protagonist I know. But here, as with the plotting, Barr gets carried away. The psychic damage Anna suffered in the last novel manifests as PTSD; the battering and dehydration from the raft trip are extreme; the emotional response to the baby is overwhelming. And then there is the slam-bang ending.

Enough already. Even if Anna can survive all this, many readers can't. While I want to see Anna stand up to physical abuse as bravely as Sid Halley or Jason Bourne, I'm no fan of S&M, and Barr brings us close to that by the end of this unlikely adventure. And speaking of the end, Barr switches from the gory to the maudlin in the flick of a paddle. It's the worst ending I've read in a long, long time.

Anna Pigeon fans won't wish to miss a chapter of her life, but the first-time reader may find this book appalling.

I'm an Anna Pigeon fan who owns all the books and waits anxiously for each new one to hit the bookshelves!
But this one truly disappointed! I have always enjoyed the character development of Anna and, too, her surrounding "players" amid the National Park settings. The 'behind the scenes' information from a National Park Ranger's perspective about the National Parks themselves has been part of what has drawn me to each new book. The storylines, however unnerving or macabre at times, have always created a literary world to step into and to read voraciously to get to the "twist" at the end. And most of the time when I got to the end, I didn't want to be there; I wanted there to be more to read. But not this time.
I had this plot figured out halfway through (very amateur in plot development this time); it was nothing more than a 400 page news story for which I see the ending everyday. Imagine a front page story being written by a journalist with nothing but time on his/her hands. I get enough name-dropping headline drama everyday in the newspaper - I don't need to read what Barr's opinions are on contemporary personalities, however a-political in her choice of name dropping she was trying to be.
Where was the character development of Anna and Paul's relationship when they finally get time to spend together in their new marriage? That and so much other development (the other rangers - Freddy, the "Diablos", etc) was missing in this one. The subplot of the cow was superfluous to the story itself. If it hadn't been there, no one would have missed it. Why not develop Chrissie or Cyril, even Carmen, in a deeper more involved manner?
Yes, the 'Border' issue is an issue that is contemporary in nature and still needs resolution. It includes proximity to National Parks. (But she even re-created the "real" park this time.) A plot could have been developed to such a greater and more powerful extent without the political sidelines, and certainly without a 400 page storyline of political personages and their dalliances.
I want to go back to the strength of 'Blind Descent' or 'Firestorm' each of which had me on the edge of my seat until I got to the end.
I hope this isn't a trend. Up to now, this has been one of my favorite all-time series.
If you're new to the series and to Anna Pigeon, read one other than this one. This one is as weak as the politicos Nevada Barr included in her storyline.

I like Nevada Barr's mysteries...don't get me wrong here. Just had a problem getting through this one. The beginning and the end had one speed and the middle bogged down. Part of the reason I pick up Barr's books however, is it is a good way to visit the parks I may never get a chance to see (though not for want of trying). I enjoy her appreciation of the great outdoors and she certainly puts a lot of that into her books. She teaches a lot about being 'green' and as a professor of environmental science, I enjoy that.

The 'mystery' is interesting. I enjoyed the story about the problems along the border. It's something that bothers me anyway. It is easy for someone in Pennsylvania to make a judgement about it, but we don't live there and deal with the crime problems every day...I still feel though that we are a nation of immigrants and need to deal with the problem in better ways than we currently are.
The story involves the politics, the discrimination, the hate involving all of this...the problem is it introduces a lot of threads here but doesn't satisfactorily deal with some of the threads it introduces (like it accused one character, a ranger from Mexico of the murders, then drops him like a brick and we never hear about him again). That leaves me unsatisfied at the end of a book. I want some type of ending for the characters introduced...