Customer Reviews

A Superior Death (An Anna Pigeon Mystery)

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

When reading Nevada Barr, it's wise to remember that it's not the mystery, but the medium. In this second of the delightful Anna Pigeon series, our intrepid Park Ranger is stationed at Lake Superior, probably the most unforgiving and treacherous of all the Great Lakes.

Just like her first book in the series, "Track of the Cat," Barr draws the reader quickly and completely into the medium--in this case, the cold, eerie and wicked Lake Superior. In no time, I was suited up with Anna, ready to make a life-threatening dive down to a well-known shipwreck that houses five ghostly bodies--and one very new one.

Who killed fellow ranger Denny Castle, himself a skilled and "superior" diver? How did his body, dressed in macabre costume, become lodged in the engine room of the wreck? Anna and her fellow Rangers, an eclectic and motley crew if there ever was one, set out in their various ways to solve the mystery. They are aided, whether they like it or not, by a brash young FBI operative who is certain that the murder is drug-related.

The identity of the murderer and the motive behind the murder take a back seat to the truly unique and wonderful descriptions of the place, the people, and especially Anna, who is one tough cookie. Almost.

A great, quick, summer read. I recommend "A Superior Death" to anybody who enjoys a well-written, if not a psychologically challenging, mystery. Anna Pigeon, in my mind, is one of the great characters, and well worth this reader's time.

Each of Ms. Barr's books I pick up is her best! I have read nearly all of her books now. I think I have one to go. It really is like finding an old friend. Anna Pigeon is a real person, with foibles and vulnerabilities, strengths, weaknesses, skills and awkwardness. In this story she is law enforcement ranger again in cold north (Lake Superior of the title) and scuba diving and boat handling. This is an excellent plot. Much like murder in the locked room. How WAS it done? You will be hooked on it. Then you will realize you have become rather fond of Ranger Anna Pigeon, and in the end you will be a fan of Nevada Barr. I know. I have been there. This book, and all her books, I highly recommend.

Anna Pigeon is a Park Ranger who has been transferred from the hot Texas desert (read Track of the Cat) to the cold reaches of Lake Superior where her skills as a diver are tested by ghostly images from a sunken ship to the very real danger of a murderer.

Nevada Barr does not simply tell the story, but she reveals it through details that give the reader insight into both the world of the Park Rangers and underwater spectacles that delight the imagination. As she learns about this cold world, so do we.

As Anna solves the mystery, we feel the fear building because we know that she is in danger and that she didn't get into that danger by ignoring her common sense, but by following her basic intelligence to logical conclusions. Logic can sometimes take too long, which always adds to great suspense.

Nevada Barr is a wonderful author. She has a dry, subtle sense of humor which gives a very nice background for the story. She also includes you in the story as a participant instead of just an observer. For example, when describing scuba dives to wrecks in Lake Superior, she doesn't give a lecture on scuba diving, but you feel as though you totally understand the experience nonetheless. The mystery is also carefully woven so that, when the culprit is identified, you are surprised but realize that all of the clues were there. This is another fine book by a very fine author.

If place can be a protagonist in a book, this is an example. Barr once again transports the reader to a national park with the eyes of a ranger. This time we visit Isle Royale, in the middle of Lake Superior, a rocky place where transportation is by sea. (A deadly sea -- remember Gordon Lightfoot's The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald???). It's worth looking up the park web site for a map.

The humans in the book are plenty interesting also. Anna Pidgeon is a bit more multi-dimensional than in Track of the Cat. She has her flaws and a wicked little sense of humor is more evident. The characters on the island are solid and make for plenty of red herrings.

The flaws in this story are minor. It takes a long time for the set-up and I began to wonder if we'd ever have a mystery. The ultimate solution is very original but how Anna makes the connections also left me shaking my head.

Bottom line -- a solid mystery plot with an interesting education about Isle Royale and its unique environment.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable mystery thanks to the setting and the largely-irrelevant but amusing sexual escapades of many characters. The heroine, Anna Pigeon, is a great character. She also has rich relationships with other characters, especially a long-distance relationship with her sister Molly, a friendship from an earlier book, and a significant-other-to-be introduced here.

Though the characters made it a good book, this wasn't entirely satisfactory as a mystery. I thought it relatively easy to figure out Who Done It even before the victim was murdered, thanks to a random off-site clue and the book jacket. Fortunately, I remained unclear about whether the murderer had accomplices, and whether any of those secondary stories would end up being relevant. These plot points kept me involved, and thanks to the characterization the book was hard to put down.

Isle Royale National Park plays an important role in the park. It's interesting that this was Barr's first job in the National Park Service. Here as in her other books, she has an interesting perspective on rangers and tourists. As someone who has backpacked on Isle Royale, I didn't mind her dumping on the boaters (though the boaters I've met there were pleasant enough). It would have been good to see backpackers in the book, and I wish that Anna Pigeon had spotted a wolf somewhere on the island. But that's just me.

As someone who loves Isle Royale and the North Woods, I was also mildly annoyed that Barr complained so much about the place -- the weather, the woods, and so on. It's clear from her other books that she is a warm-weather person who loves the South, the desert, and California. I still liked the book, but if you're a northerner like me you'll probably experience similar annoyances.

Like High Sierra and a few other Barr books, this one has its unbelievable action hero moments at the very end. I really wish that Anna Pigeon would call for backup when she has solved the crime instead of confronting the villain one-on-one in the wilderness. Nevada Barr needs to rescue Anna Pigeon in some way other than a blackout at the hands of the villain (as in both Superior Death and High Sierra).

I have read the entire Anna Pigeon series once already. This time I am reading them in order. I really enjoy this book because Ms Barr provides such accurate insight to NPS inner workings. I have known people who have worked for NPS and know people much like Tinker and Damien, who seem drawn to this kind of work. I love the intertwined story lines between Anna and her sister, Molly. In my copy are several typos where Holly is spelled 'Molly' and it was a bit confusing but I straightened it all out. I feel the cold of the lake and although most of the books in this series feel dark to me, I still am captivated by the descriptive prose. And the twisty ending is great (no hints)!

I'll admit this doesn't get off to a whirlwind start, and I'll admit that I kept going in part because a smart friend recommended it and in part because I'm a sucker for eco-anything in genre fiction. But when it takes off, it takes off. Far and away the best bits of this one are the dive sequences on the very deep and very nasty Kamloops wreck off Isle Royale. They are, I do not exaggerate, phenomenally descriptive and visceral. You can read this in a laundromat that reeks of fabric softener, with dryers thumping and children squalling and smokers trying to poison you, and you're still alone two hundred feet under Lake Superior in the dark and cold.

I've read these passages three times in the past two weeks, trying to figure out how she did it, even dreamed about them a couple of times, and not good dreams, either--I mean it, these sections are truly unnerving, especially the last, in which we find out how the murder was done. The only drawback is that I'm afraid the other Nevada Barr books can't possibly be this memorable, if only because I can't imagine a better setting; but I guess I'm going to have to find out.

This was the first Nevada Barr book I ever read,it caught my eye since it was written about Lake Superior. I live in Michigan and love that lake. The book was so well written that I've read all of her other books since. But this was my favorite. Highly recommend reading this one!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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