Customer Reviews

Flashback (Anna Pigeon Series)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I recently began reading Nevada Barr's books featuring Ranger Anna Pigeon at the suggestion of my daughter, her husband (they have both been rangers in the National Park Service) and my wife, all of whom have enjoyed the series. I enjoyed HUNTING SEASON enough that I decided to read FLASHBACK, and as my review will make clear my reactions to the book were very ambivalent. The book involves Anna's decision to accept a temporary post at Dry Tortugas National Park located near Garden Key off the coast of Florida. We actually attended a talk and book signing for Nevada Barr recently; she revealed that the location for this story had been suggested to her by three different readers during a previous book tour. Thus, if you have any suggestions for her, I recommend that you locate the nearest stop on her current tour and feel confident that she will listen carefully to you.

Dry Tortugas Park consists primarily of Fort Wadsworth, a military fortress constructed prior to the civil war but utilized instead as a Union prison for reasons explained in the novel. In addition to Confederate Civil war prisoners, the Lincoln Conspirators were imprisoned there, and this fact is an integral part of the story. Anna is temporarily replacing the previous superintendent of the facility, who has been institutionalized after seeing apparitions and apparently suffering a nervous breakdown. Shortly after assuming her post, Anna begins to delve into the Fort's history through reading the letters of her great-great aunt Raffia, who lived at the Fort during the civil war while her husband was the military commandant of the prison. Two parallel mysteries unfold and need to be solved, one involving some mysterious events and disappearances described in the letters and one involving present day events. The unexplained explosion of a mysterious cigar boat in the waters near the Fort and accompanying loss of life lead to a series of incidents that endanger Anna and cause her to question her own sanity. Thus she is distracted from what she hoped would be a quiet assignment during which she could resolve her indecision about the proposal of marriage which she recently received from sheriff and ex-priest Paul Davidson. Additional complexities eventually develop, including the real motivations of Anna's coworkers; given the closed and isolated nature of the post she suspects that recent deaths, disappearances and apparently illegal activities must involve the complicity of someone stationed at the Fort.

This is a very well plotted mystery, and the conclusion is very satisfying (altough a little contrived) as Anna unravels the threads of both the present day events and also finds a soluion to the unexplained occurrences outlined in Raffia's letters. There are some really interesting characters, and their interaction with Anna is a joy at times. In addition, there are some observations that really ring true and are articulated quite enjoyably, for instance:

Anna mirrored my own frustration at times when she kept exchanging messages with a law enforcemant officer on the mainland and observed "it seemed with each new invention developed to make communication easier- call waiting, forwarding, voicemail, pagers, cell phones - the more dificult it became to get in touch with anyone"

or tourists at the Fort "made the place mundane,{robbing it} of mystery and romance".

And what a great personal insight, "of the various neuroses, the one she most lusted after was the one that she could never quite attain".

Finally what a wonderful reply by Paul to her indecision concerning his marriage proposal and her question about its duration. "It will stand forever. Maybe lean a little after eight hundred years like the Tower of Pisa, but it will still be standing."

So, why did I only reluctantly rate this book as high four stars, and not a glowing five stars? I found that the technique which the author used to weave the two stories together significantly inhibited my enjoyment. Anna's adventures are interspersed in alternate chapters with the letters of Raffia, which relate the events during the Civil War. Furthermore, many of the chapters end in the midst of very tense situations, while this seems somewhat natural in the case of the letters it seems totally contrived in Anna's situation. Thus, I found it very easy to put the book down since I knew the next chapter provided no continuity with what I had just read. This is just the opposite of what I expect from a good mystery, where I want to get so involved that I stay up late to keep reading. I was tempted to sometimes just skip ahead, but was never sure whether I would lose context by so doing. So I found the effort by the author interesting and credit her with the attempt to do something new, but in the end I found it unsatisfying and while it was intellectually interesting it detracted from my enjoyment of the story. And from both other reviews and the reaction of my wife and friends, I realize that my feelings are quite widely shared. So I recommend the book, but with the caveat that you should be prepared for this very unusual literary technique.

Don't let the slow beginning fool you. "Flashback" is the best Nevada Barr book since "Deep South." This time around, Anna, sans dog and erstwhile fiancee Paul, is stationed for a brief time on the Dry Tortugas--the southernmost point of the Florida Keys, and therefore of the United States.

It should be a quiet, sleepy respite for Anna, who is filling in for the regular ranger--a man who has gone inexplicably mad. But then--where Anna goes, trouble follows, and this outing is no exception. In very short order, Anna, too, begins to fear she is losing her mind. There are ghosts that appear and disappear, flashing lights that cannot be, noises that may or may not be real, and the reality of the spooky Civil War fort that makes up the national park may just serve to take Anna's sanity away for good.

Told against this very interesting backdrop is another story entirely--that of Anna's ancestor Raffia Coleman, wife of the Civil War Union commander of the fort, which in those days housed Confederate prisoners, not the least of whom was the notorious Dr. Mudd, accused of helping to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Through a series of letters written by Raffia (and sent to Anna by her sister Molly), a dark and brooding mystery unfolds. Although this device has been used by other others, most notably by Anita Shreve (in "The Color of Water"), it in no way detracts from the interesting juxtaposition between Civil War times and the all-too-frightening present.

As Anna hallucinates between dreams of her great great aunt's letters and the strange goings-on of the present, the reader becomes rivited. When Barr is on, she is really on--and this book proves the point. A tragic murder of the past, and a deeping mystering of the present all entertwine to make Anna struggle for her wits and her sanity.

A good, solid yarn. Welcome back, Nevada Barr and Anna!

Before accepting a temporary supervisor's job at the Dry Tortugas National Park, an island 70 miles off Key West, park ranger Anna Pigeon had never heard of the place. Though most of the park is under water, the above-ground part is covered by Fort Jefferson, a brick behemoth built during the Civil War and obsolete before it was finished. The diving is fabulous, but after two weeks Anna is ready for something else to distract her from thinking about wedlock (fans will remember Sheriff Paul Davidson). She's beginning to understand how her predecessor went mad after his girlfriend left him.

Then her sister sends a box of letters from her great-great-aunt, Raffia, wife of Fort Jefferson's commanding officer in 1865, by which time the fort was a military prison, full of deserters and rebel prisoners. That same night Anna's second-in-command, a spit and polish type, goes missing on patrol. And the story - both stories - told in alternating, cliff-hanger chapters, takes off.

Raffia's story involves her 16-year-old sister, a handsome rebel soldier brutalized by a thuggish sergeant, and the arrival of the Lincoln assassination conspirators, including Dr. Samuel Mudd, who proclaims himself innocent of anything except setting the assassin's leg. Intrigue and collusion are in the charged air and a young girl's romanticism can get people killed. Barr brings the original fort to teeming life through the lonely, compassionate eyes and tart voice of a woman isolated in an uncommunicative army marriage.

The present-day story involves a number of breathtaking near-death experiences for Anna, as well as spectacular dives and dogged detective work piecing together a tangled (but not totally surprising) modern conspiracy which culminates in a gorgeously over-the-top finale. The parallel tale-telling works well to entangle the two though it can be maddening leaving Anna trapped at the bottom of the ocean with her air hose just out of reach....

But, as always, Barr's ("Hunting Season," "Firestorm") evocation of the natural setting (and the human menace) is vivid and the action scenes are among her best.

Other reviewers have also mentioned two things that flaw this book for me. First, the device of cutting back and forth between two different plots, present and past, has been used so much lately it's already tired. In this book, rather than introducing suspense, it was just irritating. Every chapter a cliffhanger, wow. Second, the chapters that are supposed to be letters from Raffia are too literary, long and detailed for letters. More like Raffia was trying her hand at writing a bodice-ripper melodrama in her spare time.

I am an avid fan of Nevada Barr books - the great combination of national parks and mystery stories in her books blend together to form a unique and fantastic read. It is very hard to find her books here in Australia, so over time I have acquired the complete set of Anna Pigeon books via Amazon.

I managed to borrow Flashback from my local library, and read it in a few days. There were two factors that lead to only giving it four stars:

Being from Australia, I have little background knowledge of the American Civil War, and couldn't tell whether the characters such as Dr Samuel Mudd were based on real people or were fiction. I also found similar distance issues with Liberty Falling, as there were specific details that as a non-American, I couldn't quite relate to. I felt a little bit alienated whilst reading Flashback, and wondered whether I should undertake some research about the American Civil War before I continued any further. Nevertheless, I finished it without needing to.

Secondly, I also found the alternating chapters between Anna's activities and that of Aunt Raffia and Tilly hard to follow. A chapter would often end in a dramatic moment, and then the next would follow with a completely different tone. By the time that chapter was finished, I had forgotten what was going on with Anna, (or Raffia), from two chapters ago. As I read it over a few days, this meant a little bit of backtracking occasionally to remind myself of where everyone was at.

I still think that Firestorm and Track of the Cat are the best in the series, and Blind Descent the most vividly descriptive.

I would recommend any of the Anna Pigeon series to mystery readers, those interested in female leads, and even more so, those interested in descriptive stories set in wilderness areas.

I've read all of the Nevada Barr mysteries and this by far is the worst. Jumping back and forth between the two stories was tiring and boring. I only made it halfway through, and I had to struggle to get that far. The rest of the books in the series are good, but I don't recommend this one for a first time reader of the series.

It's been awhile since I've read a Nevada Barr novel and I'd almost forgotten how much I enjoy her stories. After just a few pages, I was reminded why she is one of my favorite authors. Park ranger Anna Pigeon has been transferred to Fort Jefferson on Garden Key, a small island fort that was used as a prison during the Civil War. Anna's great, great aunt Raffia was the wife of the Captain of the fort and Anna has the letters Raffia wrote home to her sister telling her about her life in the fort. While Anna investigates a boat explosion off shore, she is also deeply into Raffia's letters and the reader gets two good stories for the price of one. With some authors, landscape descriptions can be tedious and even annoying, but Barr is a master at this and her descriptions are so rich and real they transport the reader effortlessly to the places in the story. From diving amongst the coral reefs to walking the parade ground of the fort during the Civil War the stories unravel. The danger in Anna's and the danger in Raffia's world increase page by page until the suspense is almost unbearable. This book goes to the top of my Nevada Barr favorites list.

Barr's 11th Anna Pigeon story, like all her books except her last ("Hunting Season") which took place in the same locale as "Deep South" {in the Natchez Trace}, has a most unusual setting: the Dry Tortugas National Park in the Florida Keys. Little more than a placeholder for Fort Jefferson, a Union Prison from Civil War days, this small strip of land becomes temporary duty for Pigeon while the former supervisor is on mental health leave. Soon, Anna is embroiled in danger and intrigue - a diving incident nearly proves fatal, and in quick succession she is drugged and locked up by thugs to keep her out of the way of a smuggling operation.
------ Meanwhile, the current story alternates with one Anna is reading from some hundred-year-old letters of a distant relative who is similarly telling a story about alleged Lincoln assassination prisoners befriended by her younger sister at the fort. Suspense builds as we begin to wonder how both stories turn out, which naturally enough occurs in the last two chapters.

Barr has a track record of telling a good tale, with a non-stereotypical, believable leading lady, with more than a modicum of risk-taking, crime, and escape as a dominant theme. "Flashback", referring to both the modern and the old story, is no exception and reveals our heroine at her best, while treating us to the old story as a pastime. While at first we were a little irritated at one story constantly interrupting the other, we were soon enough captivated by both to overlook the somewhat disjointed plot flow. Moreover, in the end, not everything turns out peaches and cream; while both stories come to a logical conclusion, both have factors that dissatisfy and disappoint, a reflection of true life instead of Hollywood. We suspect this latest Nevada Barr will find favor with both her extensive fan club as well as new readers. For a somewhat different forty-ish heroine in wildly different geographic settings, with danger at every turn, give Anna Pigeon and Nevada Barr a try!

When National Park Service ranger Anna Pigeon starts wearing dresses, that's a clue, or maybe more than a clue, a loudly whispered hint, that big change is on the way. That particular dress (I remember it well because she donned it in last year's HUNTING SEASON) was red and she wore it to church --- a defiance of tradition that was in true Anna spirit, which helped; the patent leather heels didn't. And now we have FLASHBACK, which in spirit and atmosphere is dangerously close to...well...southern gothic.

FLASHBACK is half contemporary Anna Pigeon series mystery and half Civil War historical mystery --- and both halves suffer from this uneven marriage.

Anna has accepted a sudden, temporary assignment as Acting Supervisor of Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas National Park. The Dry Tortugas are claustrophobically small islands out in the Atlantic, 70 miles east of Key West. She's taking the place of a man who is having psychiatric inpatient care after suffering from hallucinations and other nasty symptoms of temporary, or permanent, insanity. Anna has snapped up this post in order to avoid thinking about a proposal of marriage, back "home" in Natchez Trace.

Fort Jefferson was built in the mid-19th century and is a truly creepy place to this very day, in spite of current air conditioning and a few other modern improvements. By an enormous plot coincidence, just as she's settling in for her assignment of unknown duration, Anna receives a bunch of old letters from her sister Molly, the psychiatrist in New York. It seems that Molly and Anna have a dead relation whose husband was stationed at Fort Jefferson during and immediately after the Civil War. In the fashion of the times, the husband as commanding officer brought his wife and her younger sister with him to the Fort. The wife's letters to yet another sister back home constitute the historical part of this book.

The contemporary mystery is considerably more up-to-date, with drug money, Cuban immigrants, boat explosions and such. If it were not for a spillover of language --- passive constructions, irritating adverbs, etc. --- from the historical part into Anna Pigeon's part, the things happening in the present could easily stand alone and hold our attention. Midway through the book, Anna confronts her own demons in a way that will have her faithful fans cheering, when she figures out that someone is slipping drugs into her bottled water (remember, she's on an island, so bottled water is not the luxury it might seem otherwise). Ergo, it's altogether possible that the Supervisory Ranger she's replacing didn't go nuts, but that he was drugged too. The question, of course, is why and who.

The historical story is ingenious, if tedious. Barr has concocted a scenario in which three of the men who were convicted of treason in the assassination of President Lincoln have been sent to serve out their prison sentences at Fort Jefferson, which has not seen active duty as a military outpost and is serving as a prison instead. Primary among the conspirators is the infamous Dr. Samuel Mudd (as in "his name is mud", which more accurately for the time would have read "his name is Mudd" -- the man is the origin of the once-common expression), who preys upon the youngest of the two sisters, Anna's relations. To Barr's credit, her research and reproduction of the conditions at the historic fort are both impeccable. My cavil is with the writing style and, in particular, with its spillover into the rest of the book. Also, due to the truncation of the old-letters format, the characterizations in this part of the book suffer. Somehow the juxtaposition of Anna with her ancestor Raffia (real name, Raffaela) manages to work to the detriment of both, even though the author most likely intended to point up their differences in Anna's favor.

The elements that have worked so well for previous Anna Pigeon novels are scarce but present, and they still work. For example, the underwater scenes in FLASHBACK, while nowhere near as chilling as those in A SUPERIOR DEATH (where Anna also spends a lot of time underwater), are excellent and will scare the swim fins off you. Dry Tortugas Park is lovingly and faithfully portrayed. All the characters in the contemporary chapters are fully drawn, interesting people presented in such a way that you are curious to know what drives them.

But the unevenness with which the book proceeds is unsettling and the cliffhanger chapters (a gothic convention) are especially tiresome. What we have here may simply be a good author who is champing at the bit of her own successful series, wanting to break out into something else and her editors are indulging her (while not editing). FLASHBACK is, after all, the 11th Anna Pigeon book and Nevada Barr's 12th published novel. Yet readers want the Anna they know and love and, aye, there's the rub. I expect I'm not alone in my discomfort with Anna wearing dresses and going to church and, for heaven's sake, maybe even getting married to a sheriff who's also an ordained Episcopal priest (and who, mercifully, is in this book only at a distance). OK, so real people grow and change, especially as they age. So why is it irritating when a series character does the same in fiction? Well because, see, it's fiction and that's why we read it --- because it's not real life and so we can get justice and other important yearned-for stuff.

Nevada Barr is a talented writer. I will read her next book, no matter what it is. But please oh please, if it's about Anna Pigeon, let her leave the girlie dresses home in the closet.

--- Reviewed by Ava Dianne Day

Anna Pigeon finds herself in the isolated Dry Tortuga National Park as temporary supervisory ranger replacing a man who has suffered from delusions and mental problems. The timing seems right, as Anna has just been proposed to by Sheriff Paul Davidson in Mississippi and she needs some time and space to consider the offer. She finds that entertainment is lacking on the small islands, so she's pleased when her sister sends letters that their great-great-aunt wrote while her husband was commander of Fort Jefferson on Garden Key. The book alternates a chapter on Anna's investigation of suspicious activities at the park with letters from her great-aunt which describe her life during Civil War times when the fort was used as a prison. The most notorious prisoners were two men who were thought to be conspirators in Lincoln's assassination, and were thus reviled by all those around them. Although at times it's frustrating for the reader to be forcibly moved from one exciting plot to the other, the two stories are well-written and interestingly intertwined. Anna, ever the intrepid heroine, goes through a series of death-defying scenarios, but emerges as a surprisingly vulnerable character. Kudos to Nevada Barr for another enjoyable read!