Track of the Cat
The Anna Pigeon Mysteries series, Book 1
Nevada Barr
Berkley
Fiction, Mystery/Thriller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Anna Pigeon had many reasons for the career and scenery change that took her from life in New York City to the back country of West Texas as a park ranger, but just being away from people ranks among the top five. In the Guadalupe Mountains, in deserts that can get so hot in the summer it's physically impossible for a human to carry enough water to ensure survival, she can find the peace that has always eluded her, and feel a connection to the grandeur and beauty of the world in a way she never found in any of the religious dabblings of her youth.
She never wanted to find a body, particularly not one belonging to a fellow park ranger - and especially not one bearing all the marks of a cougar kill.
The big cats are rare enough, and the nearby ranchers, who always resented the national parks service and its emphasis on conservation, are certainly going to use it as an excuse to declare open season on the few that remain. But the more Anna thinks it over, the more it doesn't track. How could a cougar have carried the body to the middle of the sawgrass patch where she found it without getting a single cut on the carcass? And don't they usually break prey's necks, not just bite and scratch? Everyone tells her to let it go, but the more she digs, the more she finds that raises her suspicions... and the danger, as it seems someone is very keen on getting her to stop her investigations, someone who has already killed once.
REVIEW: Another audiobook selection to kill time at work, Track of the Cat introduces the popular character Anna Pigeon in a thrilling mystery rooted in the desert back country and politics of parks and conservation. Like many fictional detectives, she comes to her first mystery with a troubled past and an ostensible desire to avoid connections and conflicts, but the moment she catches a whiff of something not right about the death of her colleague she can't let it go. She's also spurred by a love of the region and its wildlife, particularly the much-maligned cougars, which she has always wanted to see in the wild - but not as victims of what she's more and more certain is a witch hunt. Along the way, she's forced to reach out to people in a way she's been avoiding since taking her new job as park ranger, first her psychiatrist sister Molly back in New York City and then to a fellow park employee and single mother (Anna's ongoing side-fling with a local eco-warrior notwithstanding; it's clear from the start that she sees that relationship as just physical, while he sees something more). Attempts on her life and more victims raise the stakes as she tries to figure out the killer's motive and identity, with some false starts and dead ends, building to an intense showdown with the fate of the park's big cats on the line. At times, it felt like Anna was dithering to draw out the story, and a few elements of the solution felt a bit convenient, but Barr's ability to evoke the desert wilderness managed to keep the rating in the solid Good range.
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