KIRKUS REVIEWPrequel to Barr?s popular Anna Pigeon series.For readers who have always wondered what made Anna Pigeon forsake a Manhattan theatre career for the life of a ranger/sleuth in the country?s most godforsaken locales, some answers: Anna, traumatized by the sudden departure of her husband, Zach, shuts her eyes and picks a job, any job, as long as it?s different from her old life. And what could be more alien than a summer as a seasonal assistant in the National Park Service, where she is immediately assigned to help ranger Jenny, aka the Fecal Queen, remove human waste deposited by tourists on the shores of the otherwise pristine Lake Powell, Utah. This dam-created lake nestled in deep canyons is a favorite destination for houseboaters, including bands of partying overprivileged 20-somethings. Unused to desert conditions, Anna embarks on an ill-advised solo hike, where she surprises three college-age boys raping a young woman. The next thing Anna knows, she awakens in a sinkhole, naked, with a bruised skull and a dislocated arm. Intermittently conscious, with nothing to drink but the apparently drugged contents of a canteen, Anna discovers the corpse of the rape victim (whose name bracelet identifies her as Kay) buried nearby. Anna eventually vows to get in even better shape to handle the rough terrain¥and charactersÂ¥of her new world. Along the way, the obvious culprits turn out not to be so obvious, and Barr succeeds in keeping us guessing as to who the real psychopaths are.Cliffhangers, literal and literary, abound.

(2011 Very good prequel to the Anna Pidgeon novels. This one starts off with Anna at the bottom of a ?jar? at the park at Lake Powell. She is trapped and cannot get out. Water in a canteen is tainted with a drug but is all that is keeping her alive. Someone has left sandwiches but nothing else. A young skunk becomes her only companion until she is finally rescued. It turns out that one of the other rangers has become jealous of her and has done these things to her. She is finally rescued in another situation by the woman's husband who forces the woman off a cliff to her death. Thru all of this Anna has been convinced to stop being a seasonal interpreter and become a full time law enforcement ranger. Really good.KIRKUS REVIEWPrequel to Barr's popular Anna Pigeon series.For readers who have always wondered what made Anna Pigeon forsake a Manhattan theatre career for the life of a ranger/sleuth in the country's most godforsaken locales, some answers: Anna, traumatized by the sudden departure of her husband, Zach, shuts her eyes and picks a job, any job, as long as it's different from her old life. And what could be more alien than a summer as a seasonal assistant in the National Park Service, where she is immediately assigned to help ranger Jenny, aka the Fecal Queen, remove human waste deposited by tourists on the shores of the otherwise pristine Lake Powell, Utah. This dam-created lake nestled in deep canyons is a favorite destination for houseboaters, including bands of partying overprivileged 20-somethings. Unused to desert conditions, Anna embarks on an ill-advised solo hike, where she surprises three college-age boys raping a young woman. The next thing Anna knows, she awakens in a sinkhole, naked, with a bruised skull and a dislocated arm. Intermittently conscious, with nothing to drink but the apparently drugged contents of a canteen, Anna discovers the corpse of the rape victim (whose name bracelet identifies her as Kay) buried nearby. Anna eventually vows to get in even better shape to handle the rough terrain¥and charactersÂ¥of her new world. Along the way, the obvious culprits turn out not to be so obvious, and Barr succeeds in keeping us guessing as to who the real psychopaths are.Cliffhangers, literal and literary, abound.Pub Date: Jan. 17th, 2012ISBN: 978-0-312-61457-7Page count: 368ppPublisher: MinotaurReview Posted Online: Nov. 21st, 2011Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1st, 2011

I'm not much of a fan of crime fiction or murder mysteries that live on the dark side of life, so I rarely read them. This one isn't dark dark but it is gritty in ways I'd prefer not to read.

Fans of Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon series will want to read this one. Here we get the backstory of Anna when she first started work for the parks service as a temp. I've read several of the novels in the series, including the first one Track of the Cat. I stopped reading them 8 or 9 years ago partly because the stories are grittier than I prefer to read. This one is no exception. The big plus for me is the detail we get about various National Parks and recreation areas across the country. That will probably pull me back again sometime for a later read of another book in the series.

This story dragged a bit too long at the beginning so I found myself looking ahead constantly and then going back to where I was. That isn't a good sign. The story played out a little strange and the odd puppy love obsession in here was a bit overdone. Read in 2017 ( )

I love Nevada Barr audios. The plots are gripping and I always learn something about the National Park where the story is set. Very satisfying. ( )

The Rope is Nevada Barr's 17th Anna Pigeon mystery. It's a prequel that goes back to 1995 when Anna Pigeon was first hired by the National Park Service as a seasonal worker. She's 35 and fresh from New York City, still numb from the shock of her husband Zack's death (he was hit by a cab). Zack was an actor and Anna a stage manager. She loved her husband and loved her job and had to get away from it all.

Anna finds herself working as a seasonal in the Glen Canyon National Recreational Area cleaning up the poop of human visitors and monitoring the fecal level of the water. Anna is pasty, skinny, wears all black, and doesn't know the first thing about living in the great outdoors. She sees life and events through her experience in the theater, which adds not only fun for the reader, but help for Anna.

When we first encounter Anna in The Rope she's trapped at the bottom of a deep hole in the ground; She's completely naked, wounded, and already dangerously dehydrated. I felt guilty laying in the comfort of my bed, sipping coffee while Anna suffered. Not to give any spoilers or anything--this is, after all, a prequel to the 16 other books in the series so we know Anna lives and becomes a ranger--Anna ends up getting strong and learning how to survive and thrive in the great outdoors.

There's a strong lesbian element and character in this book (Jenny, Anna's roommate and boss). This was satisfying to me and will be to some other readers because I know I'm not the only one who had hoped, in the early years of the series, that Anna would end up lesbian and/or bisexual. That doesn't happen but it was refreshing to see a relatively "healthy" lesbian character who is central to the storyline in an American mystery novel.

Long-time readers of the series will enjoy this book and I think new readers to the series will fall in love with Anna Pigeon. And if you haven't read an Anna Pigeon mystery before, this would be a perfectly fine one with which to start.

Each book of the series is set in a different national park, which feels like a mini-vacation as you're reading. Well, other than some murders and Anna getting knocked around a bit. Barr thoroughly uses the unique landscape of each National Park in her novels. In some of the novels the landscape even seems like a character itself.

About five books ago or so the Anna Pigeon novels started to turn a bit darker in tone and content as Barr explores how violence against women and children permeates our culture, so note that these are not exactly cozy mysteries, but they're not gratuitously violent or gory. ( )