by
Nevada Barr
ISBN: 140253633X Order from: Amazon.com
A well-written, tense mystery with a likable heroine has to contend with a slow start and an overuse of cliff-hangers.
Reviewed by David on November 30, 2003
Genre: Mystery (Police Procedural)
Synopsis: This is an unabridged recording of Flashback.
Anna Pigeon is a law enforcement ranger in the National Park Service. After years of courage and solitude, her affair with a local sheriff is blossoming into a deep realtionship. In a state of confusion between happiness and apprehension, Anna takes a temporary assignment to the remote Dry Tortugas National Park: a tiny group of islands off the coast of Florida.
As a supervisory ranger, Anna's duties on the tropical island and the surrounding sea seem easy—until an exploding boat plunges Anna and her small staff into a maelstrom of mystery and danger.
Full Review: The auther, as before, demostrates a profound skill in drawing both persons and the surrounding nature. The tropical sea and the Civil War history of the island fort make for a colorful setting for this mystery.
The author's skill is evident in eliciting sympathy both for Anna and for great-aunt, whose life Anna uncovers through reading her letters. However, the slow pace of the first half of the book strains this rapport. The clues seem to build for a long time before the normally insightful ranger starts to make connections. The slow pace is exacerbated by continuous view-hopping between Anna's increasingly stressful investigation and her great-aunt's elaborate, first-person epistolary narrative of the 1860's. The fact that the author uses this technique to view-hop at every possible cliff-hanger in either thread does not help either.
The ending tightens up the padded narrative, and the suspense and action on the island bring the reader's attention and sympathy back to ranger Pigeon. The characters are well drawn, and the conclusion is satisfyingly tense.
While an enjoyable book, one can't help but wish for terser, more continuous beginning, with less of Gothic-style suspense and helpless heroines.
Overall: 5.5; Plot: 5; Characters: 6; Style: 5.5; World-building: 6; Originality: 5.5;
Copyright date 2003, Recorded Books, 2002, Audio cassette, 11 cassettes
ISBN: 140253633X Order from: Amazon.com