Winter Study (Anna Pigeon) (Hardcover)

by Nevada Barr (Author) "The Beaver was spotless..." (more)
Key Phrases: district ranger, moose prints, scent lure, Bob Menechinn, Isle Royale, Winter Study (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In bestseller Barr's chilling 14th mystery thriller to feature National Park Service ranger Anna Pigeon (after 2005's Hard Truth), Anna joins the team of Winter Study, a research project intended to study the wolves and moose of Michigan's Isle Royale National Park, the setting for 1994's A Superior Death. Complicating the study is Bob Menechinn, an untrustworthy Homeland Security officer assigned to shadow the research. Crowded into inhospitable lodgings and persecuted by unrelenting cold, Anna is far from her comfort zone as nature turns awry with a series of bizarre events. The team stumbles upon the tracks—and the mutilated victim—of a preternaturally large, unidentified beast, and local packs of wolves descend on human-populated areas, a behavior out of step with their species. The campfire legends of youth metastasize into adult fears as Anna must piece together a connection between these anomalies while guarding herself from the strangers around her. Barr's visceral descriptions of the winter cold nicely complement the paranoia that follows the appearance of the mythic monsters at play. Author tour. (Apr.)
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From Booklist
Readers who have followed intrepid forest ranger Anna Pigeon fighting forest fires, crawling through caves, investigating crimes at national monuments, and tracking bears in service of our National Park system will find her back almost where she began, at Isle Royale National Park. Unlike her earlier visit (A Superior Death, 2003), however, this one takes place during the dead of winter, when the park is usually closed to all but the wolves and moose and the researchers who have been studying them in their unique environment. This year, however, tension is high; Homeland Security may shut down the winter study project, which has been going on for 50 years. But Anna, in her usual role as Park Service interloper-emissary (“How would you like to snowshoe over rough terrain, collecting blood-fat ticks and moose piss?”) suspects that there’s more at stake here than the study, and when murder intrudes, she knows she’s right. The environmental quotient in Barr’s novels is always high; the facts about wolves are fascinating, as are descriptions of frigid landscape, alternately beautiful and horrifying. There’s plenty of drama, too, as Anna finds herself alone and in danger more than once, but what many readers return to this series for is Anna herself, strong, funny, perceptive, and well aware that she is a small part of a dynamic, ever-changing natural world. --Stephanie Zvirin

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 370 pages
• Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons (April 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399154582
• ISBN-13: 978-0399154584
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #105,632 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 14 in The Anna Pigeon Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars scared stiff, April 12, 2008

By	Julia M. Walker (NY Finger Lakes) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Nevada Barr's NPS Ranger, Anna Pigeon, is a strong and brave woman. She treks through various wildernesses, descends into bottomless caves, fights fires, saves children, both human and lupine. She's the only character I've ever known who actually employs the self-defense strategy most women can't stomach - gouging out an attacker's eyes. She has taken an ax to the head of a man. But Anna isn't a walking instrument of destruction. She loves nature, loves the wild and celebrates it knowledgably. She loves her sister, Molly, her pets, her friends in various parks, her new husband. In all of Barr's books we spend so much time in Anna's head that first-person narration would be redundant, but that's OK. Anna's head is a good place to be. I admire her. Even though she rarely looks beyond the parameters of the task at hand, she is able to go out and do what needs to be done in her world. She sustains many injuries, but she survives and triumphs, a middle-aged argument for mind over matter. She's not a super-hero, nor would I wish her to be. A bit more imaginative than Kinsey Milhone, less careless than V.I. Warshawski, Anna is a solid character who has evolved through a carefully crafted and amazingly consistent series.

In this novel, Barr takes us back to the scene of the second book in her series, Isle Royale in Lake Superior. Rather than the deep-diving of that adventure, we have frozen treks across the island, a terrain less dramatic, if no less deadly, than the amazing spaces of Yosemite, the setting for High Country. That book was the previous holder of the series' Most-Violent-Action Award, but Winter Study surpasses it with a blend of atavistic terror and human malice that's hard to read. The natural threats are so terrifyingly described and the human perversion is so graphically portrayed that, several times, I had to put the book down and walk away. I just finished it and my neck and shoulders are stiffly painful from the tension.

While that's a visceral tribute to Barr's talent as a writer, I'm not planning to re-read the novel. The wildness of the wolves and the beauty of the island are as vividly described as the terror and the dark deeds, but the latter cast shadows that are too heavy for pleasure reading. If you like the dark side, you may disagree, but I'd advise reading this fast - airplane (or airport) style. It's not a book to savor; it's a book to finish quickly, in the daylight.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tense drama in an isolated setting, April 23, 2008

By	Karen Potts (Lake Jackson, Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Nevada Barr's latest national park mystery is set in Isle Royal, a remote island off the coast of Michigan. Her heroine, Anna Pigeon, has been sent from her assignment at Rocky Mountain National Park to Isle Royal to observe a 50-year-old study on wolves in order to prepare her for managing wolves at her home park in Colorado. Barr does a great job of evoking the cold, barren wilderness of an Isle Royal winter with very few amenities for its inhabitants. As a reader, I felt every windchill and heard every wolf call in the book. Her characters, many of them thoroughly unlikeable, are drawn with a careful eye to detail and believability. Each one is motivated by a powerful force, whether it be personal or professional. Anna herself is roughed up more often than is necessary and the repeated scenes of her narrow escapes begin to lose effectiveness after awhile. Despite this flaw and the darkness mentioned by other reviewers, this book should please Nevada Barr's many fans.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent "closed door" whodunit , April 2, 2008

By	Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews (#1 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

District Ranger Anna Pigeon of Rocky Mountains National Park is going to have wolves in the park; to know what to expect she is sent to Isle Royale in Lake Superior where scientists have been studying the wolves in their natural habitat for fifty years. They can work without tourists around as the park is closed for several moths due to dangerous weather. Homeland Security would like the park opened year round as it is on the Canadian border; they send Bob Menchinn to determine the feasibility.

Strange things are happening on the isolated island beginning with Anna's first night there. A group of seven wolves walk by the cabin where Anna and the winter study group resides. This anomaly shakes everyone as wolves normally avoid humans. Anna sees a giant wolf almost twice the size of a normal sized wolf and humongous paw prints. They think it is a wolf/dog hybrid and soon afterward an assistant is mauled to death by the wolves, which have no reported history of assaulting humans. The words "help me" appear on an ice coated window. Anna knows something is wrong and begins investigating just before another scientist disappears in what looks like a kidnapping; making her inquiries even more urgent.

A new Anna Pigeon mystery is a treat for fans of the series who expect the best from Nevada Barr and gets it with this strong "closed door" whodunit in a wintry outdoors setting. As Anna digs into the lives of the scientists and their aides, she uncovers dark secrets and blackmail, hidden agendas and ties to a cold (pun intended) case. Readers will enjoy armchair trekking with Anna as she seeks the truth allegedly of a killer wolf stalking humans.

Harriet Klausner