Deep South
   Nevada Barr
  2000 G. P. Putnam's Sons, NY USA
   ISBN: 0399145869


Park Ranger Anna Pigeon in her new assignment in Mississippi stumbles upon a gruesome murder along the Natchez Trace Parkway. The handwritten sign on a tree demands she REPENT & amid alligators, Civil War reenactors & the Ole Boy Club she gets her first taste of Southern hospitality.

I am always thrilled when another Anna Pigeon adventure comes out of Nevada Barr's mysterious & deeply researched pen. This author should be considered a national treasure for her skill in recreating the landscape of our National Parks - whether it is at a monument to liberty hard by a megatropolis, in deep caverns of the spelunking world or a firestorm in a western forest - she takes us there & immerses our senses in their flavors, sights & sounds.

In Deep South we find our intrepid Park Ranger far from her beloved Mesa Verde desert lands, surrounded by lush & humid forests, history & relics from the Civil War & a reluctant & patronizing park staff.

After driving from Colorado, with her mangey & caterwauling Piedmont in his cage & her drooling & abjectly adoring black lab Taco, Anna finds her way to her new quarters & sets about settling in only to find her way thwarted by the Ole Boy Network, a group of teenagers out for a bit of fun & a loneliness for familiar territory enough to get her back on the bottle.

Still, with her usual elan & thoughtfulness, Anna wrestles with the dominance game of her new position, her first brush with Southern race relations & a bevy of fresh single men about her age until she follows the sound of a weeping girl & stumbles upon a vicious mystery.

Deep in Civil War territory where relics of those years can be found by simply turning the earth & deep in fundamental religious territory, Anna fast loses her composure & when she encounters a midnight marauder in her garage, her life takes on a deadly seriousness.

I was glad that Anna found her balance, glad she found a couple of interesting men to think about, glad she began enjoying the dense foliage of a Southern forest & then, wham! Nevada Barr does it again - tumbles us right out of our complacency & sets a panting pace of death, suicide, treachery & greed! Good stuff!

In Deep South, Anna Pigeon begins to come out of mourning for her long-lost husband & gets her appetite back for life & that appetite is the only thing between her & certain death.

A richly textured, thoughtful & provocative mystery set in an enchanting part of our world!

More from Nevada Barr: Bittersweet, Track of the Cat, A Superior Death, Ill Wind, Endangered Species, Blind Descent, Liberty Falling & Firestorm (also reviewed).
(12/17/00)

Rebecca