Rating: 
Summary: MIXED FEELINGS!!!!!!!!
Review: This is the first Nevada Barr book I have read. In my openion it was not really good and not really bad. It had parts I enjoyed and parts I had to struggle through. Anna Pigeon is a ranger in Texas hill country. Two different rangers are found dead, everyone but Anna thinks they were accidents. She goes about proving they were murder. In doing so an attempt is made on her life. But, why were the rangers killed? What is going on??? I think the action is a little slow, maybe to much talk and thought. I don't really know but it just never grabed me the way others have. I notice the second book has her at Lake Superior, thought she was to be a ranger in the Southwest. May or may not read another one, won't if I have something I know I like on hand.
Rating:
Summary: Good mystery, but only half an ending
Review: This is the first of the Anna Pigeon mystery series, and it holds a great deal of promise.Anna is a former New Yorker who was getting tired of life in the big city, and the sudden and accidental death of her husband was the last straw. She moved away from the Big Apple, joined the National Park Service, and became one of their rangers. Assigned to Guadalupe Mountains National Park in west Texas, however, she finds that she hasn't escaped violence after all - she finds the body of a fellow ranger out in the deepest reaches of the park. At first it appears that she was the victim of a cougar attack, but Anna slowly discovers that there are too many things that just don't fit with that assumption. Anna is an extremely well developed, fleshed-out character, as are the other people in this mystery. And Barr's descriptions of the park and the surrounding area are absolutely beautiful. In some cases she describes the local flora and fauna down to the minutest detail. The plotline and logic of the story is also well developed and well thought out. There is not a single misstep. But - and this is an extremely big BUT - Barr does not follow through on the resolution of her story. She allows Anna to deal with the actual murderer, but though there is an implication of what will happen if she tries to follow through and take care of the murderer's accomplices, Barr doesn't allow Anna to at least make the attempt. I would have given this book four, or maybe even five, stars if she had let Anna try. Even if she had failed as predicted, at least there would have been more of a sense of closure. Instead I was left hanging. As Barr continues this series, I hope that she corrects this flaw in her stories, and I hope that Piedmont (Anna's cat) and Molly (Anna's psychologist sister) are not the only characters that follow Anna from book to book. In particular I hope to see more of Christina Walters and her daughter Alison. They were as human and as fleshed-out as Anna and I'd like to see her friendship with them develop and continue.
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