American/Cozy Mysteries

In High Country, Anna is in Yosemite, one of the most famous of all National Parks - the one most people think of when they think of the National Park system. The writing here is infused with dread and confinement - Anna feels she's stuck in a fog drenched trench (a geographic peculiarity of her location), and when she finally goes into the "high country", it's as though she's been enticing and teasing the reader for this special, Nevada Barr style trademark moment. Anna's visit to the high country is long, painful and memorable - and contains one of the more gruesomely realistic scenes of violence I've recently encountered in a mystery novel. Because I wasn't expecting it, I found it more powerful and ultimately moving - and Barr has a point to make about the dark side that probably lurks inside all of us. It certainly lurks inside Anna, and it's graphically displayed. Because of this, I found High Country to be one of the more satisfying of Barr's books, and one that I think might linger longest in my memory (though the cave scenes in Blind Descent are also indelible). The plot - Anna is undercover looking for four missing park employees, who apparently have nothing in common with each other - appears, like all good mystery stories, to be unsolvable. Luckily, Anna Pigeon is on the case.