by Nevada Barr
In the eighth outing of Barr's popular Anna Pigeon mystery series (Liberty Falling), the rugged sleuth has left her home in Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park to become the first woman district ranger at a Mississippi base of Natchez Trace Parkway. Pigeon has always been drawn to nature's beauty—each of the books in the series takes us to a different national park—but not long after wangling the promotion, she begins to wonder what she has gotten herself into. A stranger in a strange place, Pigeon quickly finds that southern hospitality, however fabled, doesn't seem to apply to her.
The men Pigeon supervises flout her authority; one even parks an alligator under her car. Then, just days after her arrival, she finds the body of a missing teenage girl; the dead teen has a Klan-style hood over her head and a noose around her neck. Later, while searching the crime scene, Pigeon picks up a Civil War artifact that appears to dispel the area's long-cherished legend that its city, Port Gibson, was spared by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant because he thought it "too beautiful to burn." Turns out folks don't 'preciate having their folklore upended
Pigeon is undeterred. "She'd come from a long line of lonely women," the author says of her heroine. "Women who'd come to take pride in it, overlay it with competence, independence and hard work." As Anna doggedly roots out evils hidden by veils of Spanish moss, we're drawn further into Barr's intricate mystery, which is wonderfully enhanced by her lyrical depictions of the Trace and its environs. (Putnam, $23.95)
Bottom Line: Gripping murder tale deep in the heart of Dixie
Your Reaction
