Customer Reviews

The Rope (Anna Pigeon Series)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Fans of Nevada Barr's long-running series of novels about park ranger Anna Pigeon are in for a slight but enjoyable detour with "The Rope." Instead of advancing the series in time, it takes us back to the beginning, when Anna, in 1995, first gets involved in ranger work as a seasonal employee on the shores of Lake Powell. The novel opens with Pigeon's co-workers wondering why she's disappeared, and some thinking she skedaddled back to New York after finding the work too difficult.

The truth is far different. Anna is lying naked, her head aching from a blow and one arm dislocated, at the bottom of a "jar" -- a smooth-sided canyon that can only be accessed or escaped by a ladder that Anna doesn't have. As the sun beats down, she finds what appears to be a miracle -- a canteen containing water. Anna drinks it and sleeps -- the water was drugged. When she wakes, she finds the word "whore" carved into the flesh of her thigh.

How Anna escapes her prison and unravels the clues to find the identity of her assailant form the basis for a mystery that keeps the reader's interest, whether a first-timer to the series or a fan who's read all of the Pigeon books. Going back to the beginning, The Rope establishes Anna's self-reliant personality and the ways it is tested by her ordeal in the desert and her dealings with others. Supporting characters are also well-defined, as well as details about the not-so-glamorous life of a park ranger. It's a good read.

Almost twenty years after Track of the Cat, the first Anna Pigeon mystery, we have the prequel, the missing link filling in the story of Anna's transformation from New York Theater type to national park ranger. In The Rope Anna is just a seasonal employee whose job it is to clean boat-dumped human waste off the shores of Lake Powell in Glen Canyon National Recreational Area. It's only a few months following her husband Zach's death and she's still shrouded in grief, avoiding human contact as much as possible, when after solitary hike she finds herself coming back to consciousness at the bottom of a deep, dry well--naked, alone and injured with no idea how she got there.

The plot spools out with Anna gradually figuring out what happened and taking action. Like all Anna Pigeon books this one is layered with National Park details, distinctive characters, and hard-earned philosophy. It's 1995, a time when homosexual National Park employees like Anna's roommate Jenny, an eventual friend and ally, have to stay fairly close to their closets. My favorite series character, Anna's insightful, unshakable sister Molly, is on hand as the voice of sophisticated composure, mostly residing in Anna's brain. This is not my favorite Anna Pigeon mystery, for me nothing can beat Track of the Cat or Blind Descent, but there's a renewed freshness I've been missing from the later books in the series.

Anna Pigeon is mourning the death of her beloved husband Zach and she tries to escape the memories that New York holds by heading west to work in Glen Canyon Recreation Area. So far, the job isn't working out the way Anna expected. Anna doesn't fit in with the other rangers and nobody is surprised when she packs her belongings and leaves. What the others don't know is that Anna didn't leave voluntarily - she has been abducted. Anna wakes up at the bottom of a dry, natural well, but doesn't remember how she got there. She soon realizes it's no accident that she ended up trapped in the "jar" and there is no apparent way out. Now along with fighting to get her memory back she must fight to survive!

"The Rope" is a prequel to all the prior books in the Anna Pigeon series. I have followed this series since the beginning and it's interesting to see young Anna learning "the ropes" about being a park ranger since she is usually the one in charge and teaching others. Besides Anna, her roommate Jenny is the most interesting and only other likeable character in the book. Jenny is strong, but kind, and both her physical and emotional strength becomes an inspiration to Anna later in the book. Unfortunately, almost all of the other characters in the book are repulsive and downright evil, which doesn't make for an enjoyable read. It is an intense and suspenseful story, but the whole book is so dark, there are times it's hard to keep reading because of what Anna is going through.

The book is well-written and has all the usual details expected from the author that make the setting come alive. One enjoyable part is how a young stray skunk fits into the story. In addition, the new character Jenny adds some entertaining and touching moments to the book. The excellent writing and my affection for the character of Anna motivated me to stick with it, but this just isn't the type of book I enjoy reading. Some of Barr's later books in this series are also very dark, but I had hoped this prequel would bring a lighter tone. That is definitely not the case and for me, greatly detracted from what could have been a great book.

Disclaimer: A free copy of this book was received from Amazon Vine in exchange for an honest review.

I have been a huge fan of Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon novels since Track of the Cat was released in 1993. I have enjoyed the way Anna continues to grow as a character, generally doesn't do stupid stuff (a common failing of female heroines, sad to say) and takes care of herself without having to be rescued. That the stories take place in the USA's national parks is an added bonus, and I especially enjoy reading about parks where I have been. Barr has a realistic view of the natural world and the visitors to the parks. It is sometimes a little jarring-- I will certainly never look at Lake Powell in Arizona the same way after reading about Anna's adventures with the Fecal Queen, cleaning the beaches at Glen Canyon National Park.

In The Rope, Nevada Barr goes back in time to before Anna became a ranger, a summer when she is serving as a seasonal worker at Lake Powell to escape the emptiness that has become her life in New York. Her beloved husband, Zach, has recently died and her world, so recently fulfilled with a job as stage manager for an off Broadway theater, has become meaningless. She wants to bury herself in hard, physical labor, completely away from the artificial canyons and towers of New York City so she spends her days scooping poop in the natural canyons and towers of Arizona.

When we first encounter Anna in this book, she is awakening at the bottom of a sheer hole in sandstone, naked, with a dislocated shoulder, a painful bump on her head and no memory of how she got there. The only thing she knows for sure is that someone else is involved in her captivity because there is a word carved in her upper thigh, a word she knows she did not put there. Before too long, she discovers that she shares her space with a dead body, and her terror increases.

This is not the Anna Pigeon that we have always known. She's a tenderfoot, unwise in the ways of desert survival, unknowing about backwoods hiking techniques. She's woefully out of shape and completely unprepared for the ordeal ahead of her. What she does have, however, is the one thing she thought she didn't care about anymore-- she wants to live.

Blessed with an eye for detail and incredible mental organization, as well as an uncanny ability to read people, thanks to years of watching actors and their audiences, Anna sets about changing herself from a martyred victim to a survivor. We already know she lives since this is a prequel to all of the other novels about her, but in this book she more than survives, she transforms herself.

I found this book impossible to put down. If you are already a fan of Anna Pigeon, you will love this book. If you haven't met her yet, this would be a good book to start with.

I have been a Nevada Barr fan since the first book, Track of the Cat, was published and I found it on an "owners Recommendation" at my local bookstore more than 10 years ago. I have collected every one and do not part with them, rereading them over and over. HOWEVER, the last book, set in New Orleans, was too much for me, dealing with child abuse and prostitution on a large scale. And this new book is also too much for me. Usually, the murders are for profit or accidental or one murder mystery which puts Anna in some danger to solve. This one deals with a sadistic psycho who targets Anna directly from the first; descriptions of gang rape scenes; deliberate drugging in order to carve words onto her body. It was hard to take. After, I went back to Track of the Cat to see where the events of this "first" Anna park experience led into her subsequent behavior and could not find any rationale for writing this "first" with such sadistic violence. I hope this is not going to be Barr's new style, or I will lose an author who has brought me so much pleasure over many years and many books.

I have read quite a few of Nevada Barr's novels and found them to be somewhat hit and miss. This novel, The Rope, definitely hits the bullseye. The story focuses on the previously untold history of the Nevada Barr's series heroine, Anna Pigeon. Ms. Pigeon is working a seasonal job at a remote national park where she ends up being kidnapped and thrown into a deep hole in a canyon. She is kept naked and drugged and must use her wits and cunning to try and figure out who has done this to her and how to survive. The scene in which she first awakes to find herself in this unthinkable situation is an amazing piece of writing. She goes from a drugged haze believing she has passed out from drinking and is waking up on a dark beach to the cold, hard panic of realizing that she is naked and alone at the bottom of a hole and she didn't get there on her own. I don't want to give too much away but Anna ends up having to do her own sleuthing to find out who did this to her and why. It is a nail-biting, page turning thrill ride to see what's going to happen next. I honestly could not put this book down especially after about the first 100 pages. I ended up staying up way too late but it was definitely worth losing sleep over. This is a must for fans of Anna Pigeon and is highly recommended for anyone who loves a good suspense/thriller.

I am a big fan of Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon series. As a volunteer at a visitor's center in one of our National Parks, I have observed both seasonal and permanent rangers in their "native habitat". As with any group of people there are different levels of professionalism, but fortunately I have yet to encounter any of the sociopaths who seem to find employment in the parks where Anna works! This latest book promised to be the "backstory" on Anna that we readers have been looking for for many years. I, unfortunately, did not find that to be the case for me.

What I was hoping for was a book that started with Anna's marriage or engagement to her late husband, or even earlier, back in her teenage years with her sister. Instead, it was the story of Anna's first assignment as a seasonal ranger at Lake Powell, where she is kidnapped and tormented by the obviously disturbed -- I will not go any further with details, as I do not want to spoil the ending for others who may read the reviews prior to reading the novel.

As another reviewer commented, this is a very dark work,
in my mind even more so than "Burn," the last novel
prior to this one which dealt with child prostitution and created such an outcry among many readers. What saved the book for me (in the sense of being able to finish it)was the brilliant writing of Ms Barr. As usual, the author writes beautifully haunting passages of the natural world that make you feel you are actually there. She also created an Anna that I feel is correct --she would be numb and almost unthinking after the sudden and shocking death of her beloved husband in a traffic accident. But the violence of the book (and the horribly disturbed individuals who commit it), coupled with the fact that it did not tell the story for which I hoped for, made it the one book in the series that I will not re-read, and that is a first for me.

Thanks to Amazon Vine I've just read Nevada Barr's new novel coming out January 17, 2012. The Rope is a prequel to the whole series.

In this story Anna Pigeon is 35 and she is still numb with grief at the loss of her husband, Zach, in an accident she witnessed in NYC. She has a satisfying career as a stage manager on Broadway, but she decides it might help to take some time completely away from everything familiar. She takes a summer job at Glen Canyon National Park, stationed at Dangling Rope Marina on Lake Powell.

Anna and her housemate Jenny work hard at their job clearing the area of human waste, and trying to educate vacationers about the proper way to handle toileting (to put it nicely) in the great outdoors. Jenny likes Anna but can't make a connection. Then Anna disappears. She went hiking alone on her day off and accidentally found herself in a peck of trouble.

In this story we see the making of the strong, independent woman we've grown to love over the years. She enters this summer job weak, too thin, and grief stricken. She ends the summer strong, resilient, and determined to become a national park ranger; I don't think that's giving anything away.

Meanwhile, the characters she meets and the trials and dangers she withstands are engrossing. This is an old-fashioned page turner. Anna learns that the area isn't desolate; it has its own life and beauty. I discovered another place I want to see for myself. I also came away with a new respect for her character now that I know the beginning of her story.

This is a fun mystery taking us back to 1995, when Anna Pigeon took her first job with the National Park Service. It's a prequel, so you need not have read any of the other books in the series before reading this one. If you're a long-time Anna Pigeon fan, you'll enjoy seeing her as a rookie. She's new to the outdoor life and not yet in law enforcement.

Recently widowed and drowning in despair, Anna takes an entry-level job at Lake Powell. As yet she has no wilderness savvy. On her day off she hikes out into the desert with no hat and not enough water or food. When she doesn't return, her co-workers think she has decamped and headed back to New York City. Seasonal employees don't always stick around, so no one thinks much about it. Especially because her belongings have also disappeared from her room.

As it turns out, Anna has been attacked and dropped into a deep hollow or "jar" in the sandstone. She wakes with almost no memory of what happened, and no way to get out of the jar. As she faces an ordeal of hunger and thirst, expecting to die, she uncovers some alarming clues and begins to discover how resourceful she can be in a crisis.

Who has it in for Anna, and why? Who removed her things from Park Service housing? Was it a fellow employee? Did she see something she wasn't supposed to witness?
When she reappears at the Park Service compound and reports her experiences, the investigation makes almost everyone suspect, including Anna herself. Jenny, her tough, no-nonsense housemate, turns out to be her greatest ally. Jenny also develops a mad crush on Anna, but keeps it to herself for obvious reasons.
The girl crush was the one thing in the book that was a little overdone. The workplace diversity theme is important, and the unrequited adoration is amusing, but it received a lot more page time than necessary. (I should add that this could just be my own bias, as I prefer anything resembling romance to be more in the background when I read a mystery.)

The Rope has all the entertaining elements we've come to expect from the series. Anna Pigeon gets herself into one scrape after another and seems to encounter more than her share of diabolical characters. As a former NPS employee, Nevada Barr has insider knowledge about the life. This installment also includes an important ecological message about the serious problem of human waste disposal at Lake Powell.

Okay. Let's say one thing about this novel--this novel is a page turner that you simply can't put down. I know! Reviewers say that about books more than occassionally whether it's true or not. In the case of "The Rope:Anna Pigeon Mysteries", trust me, it's true.

This book simply doesn't disappoint. It's an exciting, suspenseful read that totally immerses you in the story. The book takes you back to Anna Pigeon's early days. You learn about the events that occurred to her prior to her becoming a National Park Ranger. Her escape from New York and the loss of her husband become real and personal. You watch as Anna finds a new purpose, a new career and a new life. The writing is such that you feel like you are living these experiences with Anna Pigeon personally

I can hardly wait for the next installment!