Blood Lure (Anna Pigeon, 8)

Rating:
Summary: Nice Bear, Nice Bear
Review: After the recent bear attacks, it was interesting to get a Park Ranger's eye view of the relationship between bears and people. The information about bears and bear researchers rather overshadowed the mystery in fact.

The writing is smooth though and the story engrossing so think of it more as a story with some mystery interruptions.

Rating:
Summary: wonderful way to hear a novel
Review: Anna is on assignment in Glacier National helping with grizzly bear research. A body is found which is, of course, apparently killed by one, but the facts don't quite fit and the adventure begins.

Overall I enjoyed reading this book and recommend it, but I didn't think it was nearly as well thought out as other Anna Pigeon adventures. I struggle for words to explain without giving things away, so I'll just say that it felt contrived from the beginning. It is easy for the reader to identify the details that will be significant later in the story. As such the reader will see the ending coming. I also had a hard time following the physical setting and was constantly referencing the map (thoughtfully printed inside both the front and rear covers.

I don't think this would be good for someone's first Anna Pigeon adventure. I would recommend reading one of the others such as "Track of the Cat", "Firestorm", or "Endangered Species" first.

Rating:
Summary: A delightful and educational look at Glacier National Park
Review: Anna Pigeon returns in BLOOD LURE, as she take time away from her regular park duties to assist with bear DNA studies at Glacier National Park. Right at the beginning, we, along with Anna, learn the best (or worst, depending on your point of view) recipes to lure bears. (I must admit this isn't the first time Barr has presented me with more information than I care to learn about a particular subject.) Also, the description of the bear attack on Anna's research group is chilling and enough to make me forget any ideas I'd ever had about going camping!

Barr unravels her clues carefully and fairly; the reader has ample opportunity to put everything together (along with Anna) to solve the mystery. Yet the clues weren't blatantly obvious. Barr did a terrific job with her plotting on this book, and she deserves a pat on the back. BLOOD LURE is well worth reading. Thumbs up!

Rating:
Summary: I'll definitely be looking for Ms. Barr's back list!
Review: I've discovered Nevada Barr. No, it's not a candy bar made in Nevada. She's a mystery author and creator of the series character, Anna Pigeon-Park Ranger.

In BLOOD LURE Anna takes us on a tour of Waterton/Glacier National Peace Park, which straddles the border between Montana and Canada. Anna is sent with Joan Rand and a teenage boy on an assignment to study grizzly bears.

One night their camp is attacked by a strange-acting bear that didn't appear to be interested in food, but more interested in scaring them off as if it were more human than animal. The teenage boy ends up missing, and a camper is found dead--her neck snapped and the flesh of her face cut away, suggesting she was murdered.

Anna's beloved mountains have become something sinister as she hikes onward looking for clues and hunting the beast stalking the trails. No man could snap a neck like that without crushing the skull, and no animal can cut away flesh. What on earth is Anna hunting?

BLOOD LURE is a complex, in depth story that keeps you working to solve the mystery. You'll be terrified of the bear, mystified by the park, and always looking over your shoulder for the killer to strike again. One thing you won't see coming is the explosive and surprising ending.

Though the story had a few laugh out loud moments, it's steeped in drama. You'll get intimate with the nature of beasts--both animal and man. You'll feel like you're right there in the mountains with Anna. I'll definitely be looking for Ms. Barr's back list.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful story, but . . .
Review: Let me begin by saying that I love Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon books, especially when the park the story concerns is in the West, parks with which I am familiar. For instance, the description of the firestorm in the book of that name was so wonderfully written and so compelling that one's heart pounded with fear when reading it. Few times have I read action narrative that pulled me so totally into the scene. I've read that book and especially that scene over and over again and it just gets better.

The location for "Blood Lure" being Glacier National Park and concerned with the beautiful Grizzly bear, I really wanted to love this book. And most of it I did. The story was intriguing and the plotting was masterful, the ending was a little abrupt but almost completely satisfying. Anna Pigeon is a wonderfully three-dimensional character and Barr never makes a misstep with her - Anna never acts out of character even as (or especially as) that character develops over the time frame of all nine novels.

What I did NOT enjoy were the many errors throughout the book. Words were missing, punctuation was missing, punctuation was incorrect (the kind that makes it difficult to figure out what was meant), etc. It's like watching a film and being so engrossed in the story that you are "there" - and then you see the microphone hanging over the scene above the actors' heads. BANG! You're back in the theater again. On page 5 of "Blood Lure" Anna is introduced to Rory Van Slyke, a teenager with Earthwatchers volunteering to help with the Grizzly DNA project that has brought Anna to Glacier. Anna responds to the introduction by saying, "How you do?" There are four or five more instances like that throughout the book. Barr's words deserve better than this. These kind of sloppy editing errors snap one out of the story and ruin the flow of description and of dialogue.

I'm sure that there will be folks out there who will read through this review and correct my grammar and spelling... I believe that editors should stop relying on spell-check and do a better job of actual editing.

One last item: Having been to both Glacier and Waterton Parks (or Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park), the map in the front of the book and the geographical references within the book confused me. Consequently, I went to the Glacier Park website and downloaded the Park map. I guess maybe some of Waterton Park is in British Columbia (two campsites?), but the vast majority including the part shown on the map in the front of "Blood Lure" and the part around Flattop Mountain described in the book are directly south of Alberta, Canada, not British Columbia.

Sigh . . . color me a grouchy old woman, but I was very disappointed that a Penguin-Putnam book was this carelessly edited. However, if these kinds of errors don't bother you, by all means go ahead and read the book. The story is great if you can ignore the distractions.

Rating:
Summary: Another really good addition to this series
Review: On loan to Glacier National Park to take part in a fascinating DNA project, Anna finds herself embroiled once again in a mysterious murder. And this time the murderer may or may not be the same ferocious bear that has torn up the camp and almost eaten Anna and crew.

Joan, the French-Canadian woman who heads up the Bear DNA project, is passionate about her ursine charges, but even she is terrified by the display of violence on the part of the bear. And Rory, Joan and Anna's teenaged apprentice, is nearly catatonic with fear after the attack. It is Rory's stepmother, camping nearby in the park, who is found murdered, her face mauled. Did the bear do it? It would not be characteristic behavior if he did. Or was the murderer all too human? Did Rory, whose strange disappearance after the attack provokes a parkwide search, kill his stepmom in a fit of rage? What about Rory's meek and mild dad? Did Joan herself do it, and if so, why?

Anna sets out to solve the mystery, but the story is slow and often ponderous, even though it contains all the elements that usually grab readers of this series. The Bear DNA project is very interesting, but gets old after a while. The murder victim is uninteresting, and probably deserved what she got. Joan is a wonderful new character, and I hope to see more of her in subsequent books, but Anna is strangely one-dimensional in this book. Piedmont and Taco, her cat and dog, have been left behind in her home park, and her new lover, the sheriff, is only referred to in passing. This is disappointing, since the relationship was starting to heat up big time in "Deep South."

Anna herself is more than a bit cantankeous in this outing, almost a parody of herself. The unabridged reading saves the novel from a two-star rating, however, due to the talent and exuberance of reader Barbara Rosenblat, who "does" Anna to a tee. As a regular reader of this series, I wouldn't skip this book. But I think a newcomer should definitely bypass this for now and seek out another in the series, most of which is simply wonderful.

Rating:
Summary: A Better Barr
Review: Park Ranger Anna Pigeon is back in a recent offering from Nevada Barr entitled Blood Lure. Like the previous two novels in the series, this one is short on plot and long on character development and scenic descriptions.

This latest adventure finds Anna on temporary loan from her assigned duty station on the Natchez Trace Parkway to the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. Anna is thrilled to leave her patrol car back home and instead of traveling on the macadam asphalt, to be wandering the mountains once again. She has been assigned to assist with The Greater Glacier Bear DNA Project, which is designed through the use of special equipment, to collect various samples from passing bears in the high country of the park. The samples will be used to identify each bear individually, obtain an accurate count, and for other information.

Anna joins a team that will work far above the tundra in one specific area of the park. Things begin to rapidly deteriorate as the camp is attacked in the night by a bear. One researcher is discovered missing and as search parties fan out, a dead body is quickly found.

The cause of death is quickly established to be human, and since the park is already short staffed, Anna is reassigned to finding the killer. Her search takes her repeatedly across the scenic high vistas of the park in an almost solitary quest. The scenery and her actions are described in great detail as she slowly zeros in on the killer in a rather surprising ending.

While this is by no means the best Nevada Barr can deliver, Blood Lure is certainly an improvement over her last two books, Deep South and Liberty Falling. Less neurotic and introspective, and more prone to action, it reminds me a bit of the thrills in her first Anna pigeon novel, Track Of The Cat. I hope that she is back on track and will soon work her way back to the performances of her early books in this series.

Rating:
Summary: Fairytale Ending Puts an Added Spring in Anna's Step
Review: This is my first time reading Nevada Barr and hence my first introduction to her National Park ranger detective, Anna Pigeon. Anna's a tough old bird, forgive the pun, but it adequately describes a woman that has ridden a hellish emotional rollercoaster and now seeks the sanctity of Mother Nature in America's natural park preserves rather than deal with the predictable, shallow and disillusioning civilization.

Pigeon finds herself on loan in Glacier National Park, working with bear research expert Joan Rand, a motherly French Canadian who gets her kicks out of collecting bear DNA in the form of hair and scat while traipsing off-trail from one research planted bear lure to another. Joining them is Rory Van Sladt, a teenager with little desire or forestry experience other than his affiliation with a ecological preservation society--this most likely prompted by a desire to spruce up his college applications with prerequisite volunteer work.

When Rory's stepmother is found in the Park murdered and supposedly mauled by a bear, Anna's powers of perception kick in and amidst the backdrop of beautifully detailed descriptions of Glacier, she must pull every bit of information gleaned from her first day on the trail to a near death experience involving an extraordinary bear and her water bottle, in order to defend the benevolent character of her beloved natural sanctuary.

Anna's character, although funny at times, borders on the cynical for the majority of the story. Barr illustrates Pigeon's suspicious nature, her insensitivity and her definite non-maternal tendencies in scenes where she teases Rory unmercifully regarding his fear of bears, later during her interrogation of Rory and his father and throughout the novel as she ponders the ersatz worthlessness of modern life. But, Barr is apparently quite wise, and allows Anna a redemption of sorts when the story reaches its wonderfully magical climax in a setting fit for the best of fairytales. Happily, this bit of charm comes as a total surprise, for me perhaps because I had never read Barr before, for other veteran readers, it may be the norm in such exquisite settings.

I listened to an unabridged format of this story issued by Recorded Books--the preformer adequately brings to life the characters of Joan, Rory, and especially Anna. I recommend it for all who are intrigued by mysteries taking place within the National Park community and most certainly for all lovers of Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon series.

Rating:
Summary: Boring and Long? Or Long and intriguing?
Review: When I first saw this book it looked like a book with all of the blood and gore. I had expected to just jump right into a story about campers in the woods being mauled by a bear. When I started reading, it was totally different. When I wasn't thrilled with the beginning of the book I wanted to go and get my money back because the book didn't seem interesting whatsoever. I gave up on the book after that. Then I saw it there laying on my floor and felt that I had to read that book or I was going to hate myself for buying it and letting it pile up dust. Once I had that attitude it seemed a little easier to read. At first it seemed to be dragging on and on....until I got to the end of chapter 3. Then things started getting interesting. The book I thought I had gotten for blood and gore instead turned out to be a mystery. It had a few slow parts and some longer chapters. On the other hand the parts went by fast and it seemed I had just barely turned a few pages and I was in a new chapter. There were only a few parts that I would have changed but all-in-all it was a great book! I highly recommend it to anyone who thinks they've figured who did it, how, and why then suddenly get a curve ball and start over again.