2003 mystery, eleventh in Barr's Anna Pigeon series, murder
mysteries in US National Parks. At Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas,
seventy miles off the end of Florida, Anna replaces a chief ranger who
went mad. A boat explosion and anonymous body parts are troubling
enough; but then Anna starts to see ghosts…
That's only half the story, quite literally; even-numbered
chapters are letters from Anna's great-great-aunt Raffia, recently
rediscovered and being read by Anna, talking about her time at the
fort when it was used as a prison shortly after the Civil War. So in
effect this is two short books in one; there's only very limited
crossover between them, and each chapter tends to end on a
cliffhanger. One could probably read the first chapter, all the
even-numbered ones, then all the odd-numbered ones and the epilogue,
and not find that either story suffered unduly.
The classic failure mode with a double narrative is that one of them
is more interesting than the other, and that happens here: Raffia's
story is dripping with period detail, clearly the result of extensive
research, but to the mystery fan it's pretty clear roughly what's
going on, and there's no compelling problem to be solved beyond
filling in the details.
Because so much of the book is given over to that story, though, the
main events seem underdeveloped (for example there is almost no
mention of visitors to the park, which gives up an opportunity for red
herrings). Everything more or less makes sense in the end, but some of
it depends on personality quirks that aren't at all signalled before
the revelation. The villainous plot seems unnecessarily convoluted.
On the other hand the characterisation is solid, with the stars being
the World's Greatest Law Enforcement Officer (in a minor job on a
dead-end posting) and the wife who's remade her life in support of his
mythology, and the maybe-trans presumed-lesbian couple who keep the
lighthouse. (And they aren't just written as a couple, either; they're
distinct individuals whose roles wouldn't work if they were swapped.)
There are some rough spots, such as Anna "hoping Cuban Hispanics had
the same cultural love of family and children she'd noticed in
Mexican-American women", but also some excellent action sequences,
particularly on a couple of highly dangerous dives.
As for other long-running characters in the series, Anna has run to
this isolated island because her boyfriend has proposed to her. That's
entirely in keeping with her character as we've seen it develop from
the earliest books, but it does mean he's no more than an occasional
voice on a phone. Anna's sister Molly supplies the letters, and Anna
contacts her when she thinks she may be going as mad as the previous
chief ranger, but she's also mostly absent.
I'm still enjoying this series; I think the split narrative is a
failure but Barr remains a compelling writer. Followed by High
Country.
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