Track of the Cat: Nevada Barr

Each book in the Anna Pigeon series by Nevada Barr is set in a different national park in the US. If this book is any indication, the reader is immersed in nature and the environment while reading each story.

Anna is a park ranger, and in this novel, she has a posting at the Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas. As the book starts, she is hiking a transect in the park looking for mountain lion scat. (A transect is a path along which one counts and records occurrences of the species of study.) As she nears the end of her trek, she finds the body of another park ranger. Apparently the ranger, Sheila Drury, was mauled by a mountain lion, but Anna questions whether this is true. Against the wishes of her superiors, she pursues an investigation to find out more about the death.

For some reason, I have never thought of National Park Rangers as law enforcement officers; this may not be the largest part of their jobs at most times, but they can be trained in law enforcement, and if so, they do carry guns. Although this book is a thriller, Anna's experiences were believable. Nevada Barr was a park ranger and worked in the Guadalupe Mountains National Park, so she clearly is writing from experience and is invested in the theme of protecting animals in the park and the environment.

I found this a very good read, although to be honest, the portions where she is out on trails hiking were not my favorite parts. I suspect I am in the minority here, and I recommend this highly for readers interested in this immersion in the environment. Anna is a very interesting character, strong-willed, sometimes irritable and cranky, and for the most part a loner. The fact that Anna is not always likable makes her more interesting to me; she is not your usual type of heroine. The secondary characters were not so well developed, however.

Here is a quote from the first chapter of the book:

Anna sat down on a smooth boulder, the top hollowed into a natural seat. The red peeling arms of a Texas madrone held a veil of dusty shade over her eyes. This was the third day of this transect. By evening she would reach civilization: people. A contradiction in terms, she thought even as the words trickled through her mind. Electric lights, television, human companionship, held no allure. But she wanted a bath and she wanted a drink. Mostly she wanted a drink.

As mentioned before,  each book is set in a different National Park area and this is a bonus. I have several more books in the series: Endangered Species (1997) and Deep South (2000) and a couple of the later books. I would especially like to read Deep South because the area she is assigned to is the Natchez Trace Parkway. (My grandfather used to call me Natchez Trace.) It could be fun to read about that area.

See other reviews at Crimepieces and Petrona, and Margot's Spotlight at Confessions of a Mystery Novelist...

-----------------------------

Publisher:  Avon Books, 1994. Orig. pub. 1993.
Length:     311 pages
Format:     Paperback
Series:      Anna Pigeon, #1
Setting:     Texas
Genre:      Mystery
Source:     I purchased my copy a long time ago.

Crime Fiction Reading in June 2017

In June I began reading from my 20 Books of  Summer list (my list is HERE). Only five of my seven books read this month were from that list. The Big Killing was a carryover from my reading in May, and I purchased Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective in June so that I could read it prior to watching the TV series. So I am a bit behind on the list, but still doing well. I read three books from the 1990s and only one vintage mystery, published in 1937.

These are the seven books I read in June:

The Big Killing (1989) by Annette Meyers

Xenia Smith and Leslie Wetzon are executive headhunters located on Wall Street. This is the first of the mysteries featuring this team. Wetzon meets Barry Stark, a potential client, at the Four Seasons for lunch. He excuses himself for a moment; shortly after that, Leslie Wetzon finds his dead body in a telephone booth at the restaurant. Both Smith and Wetzon are very interested in the homicide cop, Silvestri, who is assigned to the murder. The main protagonist, Wetzon, was formerly a dancer on Broadway, and that side story lends the most interest to the story for me. 

Vanishing Act (1995) by Thomas Perry

I have only read two books by Thomas Perry, and I feel like I have found a new favorite author. The first was The Butcher's Boy, about a man who murders for hire, and a brilliant young analyst, Elizabeth Waring, who notices a pattern related to his crimes. Vanishing Act is the first in a series about Jane Whitefield, a Native American guide, who helps people in trouble find new identities and disappear. I will be reading more books by Thomas Perry later in the year.

Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective (1976) by Leslie Thomas

Dangerous Davies is a hapless detective with serious flaws who through patience and determination manages to solve the cases that he takes an interest in. The book was published in 1976 and Davies takes up the cold case of a teenage girl who disappeared in 1951. My review is HERE. I will continue reading the series (only 4 books) and watching the TV series.

The Man with the Getaway Face (1963) by Richard Stark

This is the 2nd book in the Parker series by Richard Stark (aka Donald E. Westlake). Parker is an amoral crook; Westlake wrote 24 books about him between 1962 and 2008. I find it hard to describe these books, so I am borrowing a paragraph from The University of Chicago Press, the publisher of the reprint edition: 

"Parker goes under the knife in The Man with the Getaway Face, changing his face to escape the mob and a contract on his life. Along the way he scores his biggest heist yet: an armored car in New Jersey, stuffed with cash."

Track of the Cat (1993) by Nevada Barr

Track of the Cat by Nevada Barr is a fine debut novel, the first in a series about Park Ranger Anna Pigeon. In this novel, Anna has a posting in Texas (the Guadalupe Mountains National Park). The book is a nature lover's delight, and Nevada spends a lot of time hiking in the park. Nevada is a loner, cranky, not much for socializing; a different kind of heroine. 

The Black Ice (1993) by Michael Connelly

The second novel in the Harry Bosch series starts on Christmas day; Harry is eating his Christmas dinner alone and is on call. That same night, he ends up in a motel room where the dead body of Narcotics detective Calexico Moore has been discovered; or so they assume, since the body has been in the room for weeks and is in bad shape. The investigation into how Moore died takes Harry to Mexico.

Busman's Honeymoon (1937) by Dorothy Sayers

This is the last novel in Dorothy Sayers' series about Lord Peter Wimsey. After five years of being wooed by Peter, Harriet Vane has finally said yes, and we get a peek at the wedding planning, the nuptials, but most of all their first few days of marriage at Talboys, where a dead body is discovered.