2000 mystery, eighth in Barr's Anna Pigeon series, murder mysteries
in US National Parks. Newly promoted to District Ranger on the Natchez
Trace Parkway, Anna finds herself the object of resentment by her
time-serving underlings, then discovers the body of a young woman (who
"had accrued a surprising number of reasons to be done to death for a
girl of her tender years").
This book is a sharp down-turn in the tone of the series: we've
had nasty people before, but never a thoroughly nasty environment.
It feels not so much that people have decided to be sexist and racist,
as that they've simply followed the default mindset that they've seen
all around them.
There are minor errors about timetables, and whether or not people
know each other, that make it fortunate they aren't a key part of the
mystery. As often before, Anna walks into mortal danger without taking
reasonable precautions in case she doesn't come out again. But there
are two very strong action sequences here, an alligator attack and a
final battle with the murderer, which somewhat make up for a lack of
detective vim.
The ending is particularly abrupt even by this series' standards, and
this is definitely the first of the darker mode into which the series
seems (five books later) to be settling, but even so this is a decent
mystery. Followed by Blood Lure.
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