|
Nevada Barr's latest novel in her intriguing mysteries based in National Parks comes closer to a thriller than a whodunit. The drama unfolds in the Majestic Rocky Mountain National Park as Ranger Anna Pigeon is installed as the first woman district ranger in the park's history. It is a career challenge she can't turn down, despite her recent marriage to her sheriff husband, Paul, in Mississippi, and she undertakes it with mixed emotions.
During her second day on the job, Anna is confronted with the arrival of two disheveled, terrified young teenaged girls who stumble into the handicapped camping area and are rescued by a paraplegic woman, Heath Jarrod. The children, traumatized and incoherent, turn to Heath as a savior of sorts, which draws this woman, who is coming to grips with her own devastating loss in a climbing mishap, into a dangerous and grisly plot. Three girls had been missing from a religious retreat for over a month; now two have turned up in the middle of the night and one is still unaccounted for. Ranger Pigeon, who had been merely briefed on the local rangers' efforts in searching for the missing girls, is suddenly central to unraveling the mystery of where they have been and what has happened to them during their absence.
The search for truth leads Anna into the Rockies back country, and Heath Jarrod to a polygamist sect commune just outside the park boundaries, headed by a messianic leader. Jarrod's wounded psyche and ravaged body are put to greater tests than even her career as a mountain climber had offered. Anna is confronted with the unholiest of horrors, a psychopathic serial killer intent on recruiting and training followers of his dark art.
Not since BLOOD LURE has there been a tale so spine-tingling as Anna's pursuit of an elusive evil masquerading as good. HARD TRUTH is perhaps the darkest book in Barr's series, which always offers enough plot twists and as-real-as-it-gets locations in our nation's glorious national parks to keep the pages flying. I'm fortunate to number among my friends several National Forest and National Parks rangers who devour these books like hot dogs at a picnic. They appreciate the authenticity of the settings and the insider humor of the realities of the low pay, rugged living conditions, and camaraderie between park service employees. I've heard more than one of them complain of lost sleep or having to hastily spirit the book into a desk drawer because they simply couldn't put it down. Barr, who herself has been a career park ranger, knows where a lot of bodies are buried, both literally and figuratively, which adds to the stark reality of her hair-raising plots.
In HARD TRUTH, Barr introduces a richly defined character through Heath Jarrod, a woman about whom we care and wonder what will happen in her future. Usually, Barr neatly ties up the loose ends at the end of each sojourn in yet another National Park, although she has continued secondary characters in the past. We can only hope that, in future books, we learn how Heath comes to terms with her paraplegia and other elements that arise from the plot.
--- Reviewed by Roz Shea
• Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.
© Copyright 1996-2008, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
Back to top.
|
