RogerBW's Blog

Ill Wind, Nevada Barr 11 July 2016

1995 mystery, third in Barr's Anna Pigeon series, murder mysteries in US National Parks. Visitors to Mesa Verde Park and the Anasazi cliff dwellings have been coming away with a strange and deadly illness.

This one's back to a slowish start, and to the lush descriptions of scenery… sometimes perhaps too lush, as they seem to end up as substitutes for anything happening. Anna's at a loss for too much of this book, even though the reader can work out at least roughly what's going on.

Still, the supporting cast are excellent, and this is a story that forces Anna to consider her problems and how she deals with them, and consider that the means she's using may be becoming more problems in themselves. Sometimes this even threatens to overpower the mystery, though I suspect that may be deliberate given Anna's parlous state.

There are secondary concerns too, mostly sabotage, but several personal ones, some of which turn out to be crucial to the eventual solution of the main plot. But mostly this is Anna's book for hitting rock bottom and just barely beginning to rebound.

Followed by Firestorm.

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Previous in series: A Superior Death | Series: Anna Pigeon | Next in series: Firestorm

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