Not one of her best, but since I was at Mesa Verde last month, I could envision the places she was describing.KIRKUS REVIEWAs historians and contractors slug it out over replacing the ancient waterlines in Mesa Verde National Park, noncombatant park ranger Anna Pigeon battles a demon of her own: her growing attraction to Stacy Meyers, a law-enforcement temp unhappily married (what did he and Rose Meyers ever see in each other, anyway?) and burdened with a special-needs stepchild. Soon enough, though, there are more immediate problems: contractor Ted Greeley's hiring of Tom Silva, estranged husband of park superintendent's secretary Patsy Silva, who immediately feels she's being harassed by her obsessive ex; a midnight sabotage attempt on Greeley's excavation equipment; a nip-and-tuck airlift of an asthmatic girl who collapses in the Cliff Palace; Stacy's strangely dissociated behavior during the rescue; and finally the eerie discovery of Stacy's corpse, neatly laid out on the fire-pit floor of the Cliff Palace without a mark to indicate how he died. Whodunit, and why, and how? Not as intense or as ingenious as A Superior Death (1994), and this time Anna's struggles with alcoholism and the continuing grief of widowhood eclipse the more routine intrigues of the plot. But the supporting characters have stubborn lives of their own -- you never get the sense that they've spent their whole lives waiting to be suspects in a murder case -- and Barr's sense of place is as wondrous as ever.

(1995) Pidgeon is now working as ranger at Mesa Verde in Colorado. Went back to this book in the series that I hadn't read after our trip to Mesa Verde last month. With the park still vivid in my mind, the use of the location really hit home. Barr really does her homework and knows the location very well. In a seemingly very quiet park, suddenly one of the park employees is found dead in a kiva and it seems that supernatural forces could only have killed him. When a couple of kids with asthma get very sick in the Cliff Palace (one dies), Anna is convinced that they are related to the murder of Stacy Meyers. With the help of an FBI agent they confront the culprit Ted Greeley, who has been using the park as a dumping ground for toxic chemicals that produce cyanide gas. He is illegally dumping it and paid by manufacturers in the area who want it gone. Stacy and later a cohort of Ted's learn of the plan and threaten to expose it before they both are killed. KIRKUS REVIEWAs historians and contractors slug it out over replacing the ancient waterlines in Mesa Verde National Park, noncombatant park ranger Anna Pigeon battles a demon of her own: her growing attraction to Stacy Meyers, a law-enforcement temp unhappily married (what did he and Rose Meyers ever see in each other, anyway?) and burdened with a special-needs stepchild. Soon enough, though, there are more immediate problems: contractor Ted Greeley's hiring of Tom Silva, estranged husband of park superintendent's secretary Patsy Silva, who immediately feels she's being harassed by her obsessive ex; a midnight sabotage attempt on Greeley's excavation equipment; a nip-and-tuck airlift of an asthmatic girl who collapses in the Cliff Palace; Stacy's strangely dissociated behavior during the rescue; and finally the eerie discovery of Stacy's corpse, neatly laid out on the fire-pit floor of the Cliff Palace without a mark to indicate how he died. Whodunit, and why, and how? Not as intense or as ingenious as A Superior Death (1994), and this time Anna's struggles with alcoholism and the continuing grief of widowhood eclipse the more routine intrigues of the plot. But the supporting characters have stubborn lives of their own -- you never get the sense that they've spent their whole lives waiting to be suspects in a murder case -- and Barr's sense of place is as wondrous as ever.Pub Date: April 6th, 1995ISBN: 0425197255Page count: 320ppPublisher: PutnamReview Posted Online: May 20th, 2010Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1st, 1995

This is the first Anna Pigeon I've read that takes place in a park I've been to (albeit, about two decades ago... so ironically, almost contemporary with the book!) Ill Wind takes a little more time to build up- we go about a third of the book without the murder, putting together the cast of characters that make up ranger life on the Mesa. The backdrop of the cliff dwellings and the mysterious disappearance of the Anasazi make for an interesting parallel, but I feel like the resolution comes hastily.

Also, it's the nineties and you can definitely tell! ( )

Park ranger Anna Pigeon has moved to Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, where the Anasazi natives once lived. Tourists run rampant through the Cliff Palace and Balcony House that housed the Indian civilization hundreds of years ago. Anna Pigeon is doing her usual thing—policing the park, aiding rescues, and drinking wine. There's the typical drama among the staff and park-related workers, but things turn ugly when the Chindi spirits, strange lights, and ghosts are spotted. The number of rescues of older and younger tourists is unusually elevated. A young girl dies from asthma-related issues. Then Anna's favorite park ranger, Stacy Meyers, is found dead and mysteriously posed inside the ruins. With FBI agent Frederick Stanton's help, Anna has added hunting for a murderer to her list of duties. Filled with breathtaking descriptions of her characters' world, Nevada Barr takes the reader into the beautiful—and seedy side—of the National Parks. ( )

Anna Pigeon is anti-social; her job as NPS ranger has suited her well in her previous two assignments, in National Parks where the primary objective was to protect the water, the land and its wild inhabitants. But now, she is posted to Colorado's Mesa Verde, where the ancient ruins mysteriously abandoned by the lost Anasazi civilization draw crowds of tourists, and where Anna is obliged to live in dormitory-style housing with a group of younger seasonal employees whose late-into-the-night parties are not conducive to peace or privacy. Anna is still mourning her long-dead husband, but finds herself attracted to a married ranger with a lot of baggage. The universe gets up to its usual tricks, people turn up dead, evil spirits may be in the mist, and Anna charges head-long into danger to seek the truth and make things right. She even takes a step toward facing her own demons. No spoiler here---she lives to fight another day.
R & R fiction at its best. ( )