Rating: 
Summary: A fantastic book, great suspense, as gritty as it gets....
Review: Nevada Barr is one of the best writers around, and High Country is a testament to her skills as a writer in general and a mystery writer in particular. I've found writing as skilled and as beautiful in the works of James Lee Burke, but this novel awes me in that its grittiness equals if not surpasses Burke's. Toughen up your stomach before you read this one, maybe keep a bottle of Mylanta handy.
Anna Pigeon undercover as a not-so-good waitress adds a pleasant twist to the plot, allowing her the room to maneuver where no park ranger can go, and without the comfort of backup. This one's a chiller right to the end.
Rating:
Summary: Anna Pigeon faces perhaps her toughest assignment yet
Review: "Does that waitress who just took our order look familiar?"
"Well, maybe --- looks kind of like a park security ranger I had a run-in with. Annie something?"
"Nah, couldn't be. What would she be doing, hopping tables at Yosemite?"Had this conversation actually taken place in Nevada Barr's latest Anna Pigeon mystery, HIGH COUNTRY, Anna's cover would have been blown. For there she is --- starched uniform, crisp black apron and order pad, schlepping dinner trays and donating her tips to the Mountain Security Fund, while trying to discover what has happened to four seasonal park workers who vanished without a trace. Is it foul play, or a climbing accident in the High Sierra wilderness? Did these part-time workers just take off, or are they injured or possibly dead somewhere in some of the most rugged back country in America's National Park system? Anna meets one of her most deadly encounters with human nature and mother nature as she slowly pieces together fragments of these four young people's lives to ferret out the truth behind their mysterious disappearance. She and the only two superiors at Yosemite who know who she is suspect that drugs are involved. She befriends the former roommates of one of the missing waitresses as she tries to become part of the close-knit community of Yosemite Village. Anyone could be involved, from the assistant ranger to the chef to the head waitress or one of the busboys, and she needs to find out soon where the trail leads to locating the missing four. Anna discovers the source of the drugs, but the smuggler remains elusive. She embarks on a deadly hunt through freezing temperatures and fire, climaxing with a midnight cat and mouse pursuit that is perhaps the greatest challenge to her life. Nevada Barr masterfully evokes the sights, sounds and majestic beauty of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in this, her twelfth mystery featuring the courageous National Parks officer. For the first time, Anna cannot rely on her uniform, badge or gun to bring the criminals to justice. Armed only with her years of experience in crime solving and ability to read people, she takes on some of the most sadistic and insidious killers in her career. --- Reviewed by Roz Shea
Rating:
Summary: Anna Pigeon faces perhaps her toughest assignment yet
Review: "Does that waitress who just took our order look familiar?"
"Well, maybe --- looks kind of like a park security ranger I had a run-in with. Annie something?"
"Nah, couldn't be. What would she be doing, hopping tables at Yosemite?" Had this conversation actually taken place in Nevada Barr's latest Anna Pigeon mystery, HIGH COUNTRY, Anna's cover would have been blown. For there she is --- starched uniform, crisp black apron and order pad, schlepping dinner trays and donating her tips to the Mountain Security Fund, while trying to discover what has happened to four seasonal park workers who vanished without a trace. Is it foul play, or a climbing accident in the High Sierra wilderness? Did these part-time workers just take off, or are they injured or possibly dead somewhere in some of the most rugged back country in America's National Park system? Anna meets one of her most deadly encounters with human nature and mother nature as she slowly pieces together fragments of these four young people's lives to ferret out the truth behind their mysterious disappearance. She and the only two superiors at Yosemite who know who she is suspect that drugs are involved. She befriends the former roommates of one of the missing waitresses as she tries to become part of the close-knit community of Yosemite Village. Anyone could be involved, from the assistant ranger to the chef to the head waitress or one of the busboys, and she needs to find out soon where the trail leads to locating the missing four. Anna discovers the source of the drugs, but the smuggler remains elusive. She embarks on a deadly hunt through freezing temperatures and fire, climaxing with a midnight cat and mouse pursuit that is perhaps the greatest challenge to her life. Nevada Barr masterfully evokes the sights, sounds and majestic beauty of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in this, her twelfth mystery featuring the courageous National Parks officer. For the first time, Anna cannot rely on her uniform, badge or gun to bring the criminals to justice. Armed only with her years of experience in crime solving and ability to read people, she takes on some of the most sadistic and insidious killers in her career. --- Reviewed by Roz Shea
Rating:
Summary: This one is a 10 star....
Review: After the miscue of "Flashback", I was absolutely thrilled that in "High Country" Anna was the Anna of earlier works. She's back where she belongs, in the high country, tough, gutsy and totally enjoyable. The plot is great, the characters are believable, and the scenery is beautiful. Thank you Ms. Barr. I am not going to waste words doing a synopsis...the dust jacket does that. So, to all of you who were so disappointed with "Flashback", please run out and get this one. It's great.
Rating:
Summary: ONE HELL OF A HIKE
Review: And high in more ways than one. My mother has been recommending Nevada Barr books to me, especially this one since the story takes place in Yosemite National Park. About half way through, when Anna Pigeon, the NPS's spy, begins to turn up some leads as to why four young people have disappeared presumably in the back country, I started reading High Country as if it were a John Grisham novel. Couldn't put it down, devoured it in 24 hours. Loved it. My mother always gives me good books to read, I'm telling you.
Rating: 
Summary: thesaurus walts
Review: Anna Pigeon is a great gal, but in this latest installment of her life, the horrors she endures at 50 roll off her too easily to be at all believable. Her physical ordeal in the dark and freezing mountains alone would be enough to make even quite hardy people need a few days of rest. But good old Anna, tender of heart thogh she is, is hardly phased by the violence, the suffering, the nastiness she encounters in this book, even though Barr allows a sentence or two of quick, sentimental reflection from time to time. And I wonder how some of the other sentences would have turned out had Barr not had her thesaurus handy - plethora used too many times, not withstanding! I enjoy the excitement of improbable fiction as well as the next person, but this offering is just too silly for credibility.
Rating: 
Summary: A book of suspense, amid the beauty and danger of nature
Review: Anna Pigeon is an experienced National Park Ranger, who goes in undercover in Yosemite Park. As a waitress, she listens to gossip trying to discover the fate of four disappeared young people; occurrence which so far evaded normal investigation.
It doesn't take long to find several people acting suspiciously. Devoid of normal police methods, Anna heads into wilderness. But both human malice and the winter in high country prove a deadly danger.
Anna is a strong, appealing character. In her late forties, and small of stature, she has to use her wits and toughness to hold her own with villains. But her own doubts sometimes prove a canny enemy.
Vivid in its description of nature, and with the usual danger and injuries to Anna, the novel is similar to the others in the series. But while not breaking new ground, this mystery remains a suitable companion to other books in this satisfying, and frequently tense series.
--inotherworlds.com
Rating:
Summary: One of the best in the series
Review: Anna Pigeon is back in action at Yosemite National Park, this time as a waitress in an undercover operation. Four young park employees are missing, and it's Anna's job to find out why. She lives in a dorm with several 20-something waitresses and discovers how much she has changed and mellowed since she was their age. She also discovers that things and people are not what they seem. She hikes into the park and discovers an unruly group of squatters who have taken over one of the missing men's tent homes, and later finds the secret to what's going wrong in the park. She deals with some interesting characters, from a grouchy head chef to an air-headed fellow waitress. This book contains some exciting scenes, especially when Anna is forced to use all of her mental and physical resources to avoid being captured by two hardened criminals.
As always, the background of the National Park is one of the best parts of the book. Anna Pigeon fans will welcome this as one of the best entries in the series.
Rating: 
Summary: Protecting Yosemite from too many visitors?
Review: As other reviewers have said, the storyline of High Country is good and holds the reader's interest until the end. But I have some quibbles. I have read most of Nevada Barr's books and always look forward to a new one coming out, partly because I like learning about the different parks. I feel like I don't have much of a feel for Yosemite after reading this book, other than it tends to be very dark and dreary except for the rare times when the sun is shining. Also I was surprised by the flowery language used in the beginning of the book. Mostly the language is employed to describe the characters and set the stage. For some reason I found the descriptions funny and a bit over the top. It seemed to be a departure from Barr's previous writing. Also, even though they were convenient for the plot, I found several of Anna's decisions to be unbelieveably careless. In the other books, she seemed to have more sense about her. It is hard to tell from the above, but I am fond of Anna and Nevada Barr's books and will continue to look forward to the next one.
Rating:
Summary: Boring, unnecessary violence
Review: Barr is an uneven writer. I love a couple of her books; others i find boring. This is just plain bad. I skipped large parts because I found the book boring and distasteful. Setting people on fire, gauging out eyes, this stuff is not fun to read. I would skip this book.
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