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Anna Pigeon #18
Destroyer Angel
Anna Pigeon, a ranger for the U.S. Park Services, sets off on vacation—an autumn canoe trip in the to the Iron Range in upstate Minnesota. With Anna is her friend Heath, a paraplegic; Heath’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Elizabeth; Leah, a wealthy designer of outdoor equipment; and her daughter, Katie, who is thirteen. For Heath and Leah, this is a shakedown cruise to test a new cutting edge line of camping equipment. The equipment, designed by Leah, will make camping and canoeing more accessible to disabled outdoorsmen.
On their second night out, Anna goes off on her own for a solo evening float on the Fox River. When she comes back, she finds that four thugs, armed with rifles, pistols, and knives, have taken the two women and their teenaged daughters captive. With limited resources and no access to the outside world, Anna has only two days to rescue them before her friends are either killed or flown out of the country.
On their second night out, Anna goes off on her own for a solo evening float on the Fox River. When she comes back, she finds that four thugs, armed with rifles, pistols, and knives, have taken the two women and their teenaged daughters captive. With limited resources and no access to the outside world, Anna has only two days to rescue them before her friends are either killed or flown out of the country.
342 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2014
About the author
Nevada Barr
58 books2,193 followersNevada Barr is a mystery fiction author, known for her "Anna Pigeon" series of mysteries, set in National Parks in the United States. Barr has won an Agatha Award for best first novel for Track of the Cat.
Barr was named after the state of her birth. She grew up in Johnstonville, California. She finished college at the University of California, Irvine. Originally, Barr started to pursue a career in theatre, but decided to be a park ranger. In 1984 she published her first novel, Bittersweet, a bleak lesbian historical novel set in the days of the Western frontier.
While working in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Barr created the Anna Pigeon series. Pigeon is a law enforcement officer with the United States National Park Service. Each book in the series takes place in a different National Park, where Pigeon solves a murder mystery, often related to natural resource issues. She is a satirical, witty woman whose icy exterior is broken down in each book by a hunky male to whom she is attracted (such as Rogelio).
Currently, Ms. Barr lives in New Orleans, LA.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/nevada...
Barr was named after the state of her birth. She grew up in Johnstonville, California. She finished college at the University of California, Irvine. Originally, Barr started to pursue a career in theatre, but decided to be a park ranger. In 1984 she published her first novel, Bittersweet, a bleak lesbian historical novel set in the days of the Western frontier.
While working in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Barr created the Anna Pigeon series. Pigeon is a law enforcement officer with the United States National Park Service. Each book in the series takes place in a different National Park, where Pigeon solves a murder mystery, often related to natural resource issues. She is a satirical, witty woman whose icy exterior is broken down in each book by a hunky male to whom she is attracted (such as Rogelio).
Currently, Ms. Barr lives in New Orleans, LA.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/nevada...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 940 reviews
May 27, 2014
SO disappointed. I have loved each and every one of Nevada Barr's previous books. I love learning about different parks and Anna's struggles with dealing with people. This book is in a basically nameless forest and full of stereotyped characters - the paraplegic who forges on courageously through her limitations, the sullen teenager who occasionally shows a spark of humanity, the semi-autistic mother who can't seem to relate to her daughter, the leader of the kidnappers who has no human feeling, the rapist, and the criminal who can't bear to kill a dog. Oh, and let's not forget the loyal smart dog who can somehow intuit every thought of Anna's and do exactly what needs to be done.
I only finished the book because I won it on Goodreads and promised to write a review. Otherwise I would have put it down early on. I didn't really care about any of the characters, and it was just continual violence page after page. There is no mystery to solve - just bad guys to kill.
Please go back to writing about our National Parks and life in the NPS adding in a mystery to keep up our interest!!!
I only finished the book because I won it on Goodreads and promised to write a review. Otherwise I would have put it down early on. I didn't really care about any of the characters, and it was just continual violence page after page. There is no mystery to solve - just bad guys to kill.
Please go back to writing about our National Parks and life in the NPS adding in a mystery to keep up our interest!!!
June 13, 2014
This was perfect for me, just what I hoped for in an escape into the latest thriller featuring National Park Ranger Anna Pigeon. Another scenario in a wilderness setting that pits Anna’s relentless spirit of defiance and resourcefulness against some seriously dangerous dudes. Well, one dude actually in this case.
In this tale, Anna is on a camping and canoeing vacation with friends in a National Forest in northern Minnesota. Off the grid in the real boonies. Quite a dysfunction crew. Her true friend Heath is paraplegic and her 15-year adoptive daughter a bit fragile from a dark past. Along for the ride is a wealthy engineer, Leah, who wants to test out special adaptive camping equipment her company for the handicapped, and her snurly 13-year old daughter, all pissed for being unplugged from her smart phone. So why not shake up the flagging party by having a gang of four armed city thugs kidnap everybody while Anna is away on a little canoe trip to hold onto her sanity.
Sure it’s contrived, but wouldn’t you love to see how Anna can save the day? With no tools, weapons, or food. Plus, she has the extra burden of Heath’s dog, who has a broken leg from the bad guys. What is supposed to be a day’s hike to where a plane can pick the group up turns out to be a much longer ordeal when they get lost. In time, the twisted, selfish psyches of the bad guys get unleashed, at the expense of effective teamwork, and, for the hostages, it becomes a parable of “that which does not kill you makes you stronger”. Three of the bad guys are virtually cartoon monsters, but one, called “dude” for anonymity, is as implacable and ruthless as the Terminator.
As in so many of Barr’s stories, what would seem likely to sink under the trappings of a wrenching potboiler is saved by Anna’s can-do ego balanced by self-deprecating humor. Always OCD over littering by the killers she always seems to run into in the wilderness. This one becomes an artful cross between “The Ransom of Red Chief” (a story where kidnapped kid drives the bad guys nuts) and “Straw Dogs” (a Peckinpah movie where an average guy has to kill evil guys swarming like zombies).
In this tale, Anna is on a camping and canoeing vacation with friends in a National Forest in northern Minnesota. Off the grid in the real boonies. Quite a dysfunction crew. Her true friend Heath is paraplegic and her 15-year adoptive daughter a bit fragile from a dark past. Along for the ride is a wealthy engineer, Leah, who wants to test out special adaptive camping equipment her company for the handicapped, and her snurly 13-year old daughter, all pissed for being unplugged from her smart phone. So why not shake up the flagging party by having a gang of four armed city thugs kidnap everybody while Anna is away on a little canoe trip to hold onto her sanity.
Sure it’s contrived, but wouldn’t you love to see how Anna can save the day? With no tools, weapons, or food. Plus, she has the extra burden of Heath’s dog, who has a broken leg from the bad guys. What is supposed to be a day’s hike to where a plane can pick the group up turns out to be a much longer ordeal when they get lost. In time, the twisted, selfish psyches of the bad guys get unleashed, at the expense of effective teamwork, and, for the hostages, it becomes a parable of “that which does not kill you makes you stronger”. Three of the bad guys are virtually cartoon monsters, but one, called “dude” for anonymity, is as implacable and ruthless as the Terminator.
As in so many of Barr’s stories, what would seem likely to sink under the trappings of a wrenching potboiler is saved by Anna’s can-do ego balanced by self-deprecating humor. Always OCD over littering by the killers she always seems to run into in the wilderness. This one becomes an artful cross between “The Ransom of Red Chief” (a story where kidnapped kid drives the bad guys nuts) and “Straw Dogs” (a Peckinpah movie where an average guy has to kill evil guys swarming like zombies).
April 12, 2014
I usually love the Anna Pigeon series because of the many different parks she is assigned to, one usually learns things about the parks that is very interesting. This book was different, this book is all Anna, alone with a trusty dog in a green cape, she must save her friends. Very suspenseful from the very beginning, the pages literally flew by. Sins of the past must be paid. Along the way some of the characters learn new things about themselves, their strength and bonds. Adversity either brings out the best or the worst in people.
Barr j=has written so many books in this series and yet she stays on top of her game, does much more than phone it in. Good series, wonderful characters.
Barr j=has written so many books in this series and yet she stays on top of her game, does much more than phone it in. Good series, wonderful characters.
January 21, 2015
More godawful prose from one of the worst thriller writers. I'd put her at the bottom, except the field is very competitive. Barr is one of those writers who gets worse, not better, the more novels she churns out.
Her ornery refusal to use pronouns continues. "Muscles would not bunch. Fingers would not bend and claw."
Tears threatened.
Fingers shook.
Eyesight dimmed.
Feet worked.
Knees bent.
Hip joints rotated.
Light helped.
Vision grayed out.
She has a tendency to repeat sentence patterns. Here's the worst example - an entire paragraph without letup. Her editor should catch things like this.
Jimmy's coat protecting Anna's rump from the wet ground, her lap protecting Wily, they made themselves comfortable in a stand of oaks ringed with wild-rose bushes and bracken. Hunkered down to prey, the two waited with the patience of wild animals. Putting her hands under the nylon rain cape she'd made Wily, she let his fur warm her fingers. Head back against the bole of the tree, she listened to the progress of the men gathering firewood. Ears and nose being of superior quality, Wily closed his eyes and rested his chin on Anna's forearm.
There are horrible, cringeworthy, bullshitty sentences like:
Wily was warm and the fire was warm and Anna was as the fire and the dog and the boulder, cured of the burden of what the poets and the preachers called soul.
Don't try to write above your weight class. Thriller readers don't want sentences like that. Please. Stop.
Please stop creating horrible new verbs, like "crabbed" for moved like a crab and "skinned out" for removed a piece of clothing. These ghastly locutions are used multiple times. Please give these words a break: muscles, bones, skull, belly. These words appear dozens of times in her last few books. Are you afraid people won't think you're a poet if you use the words head and stomach? Please, get a clue: no one thinks you're a poet and never will.
Stop writing sentences like: "Their muscles and bones were gentled with fading childhood and oncoming fertility."
Please.
The plot: women and underage girls being tortured in the woods. There's been a lot of increased grotesquerie in Barr's recent novels. It's almost like she's getting some sadistic thrill out of it. Yes, the men, the killers and rapists and predators always lose in the end, but boy do the women have to go through a lot of physical abuse to get to that point.
August 12, 2016
No one can put five females and an old dog out in the middle of nowhere, make them face untold danger, and have readers clapping and cheering like Nevada Barr can. Sure this is a thriller. Of course, it's an adventure story-- women against killers and nature. Naturally Anna Pigeon gets to impart valuable information on responsible camping, and you'd better believe that much-needed comic relief is interspersed throughout all the deadly seriousness. But Destroyer Angel is more than the sum of its parts-- and its descriptions.
This book succeeds as both thriller and adventure story, but what makes it special are the women. Unarmed, with no food, and a gargantuan task ahead of her, Anna goes feral in an attempt to get the job done. Introduced in an earlier book, I was happy to see the changes Heath and her adopted daughter Elizabeth have undergone. Peppering up the gumbo are Leah, a woman more used to living in her mind than dealing with humans, and her spoiled daughter Katie. The interactions of the four kidnapped females are fascinating as they go through the various stages of fear, hunger, and exhaustion. Can they rise above being mere victims? I'll leave that for you to discover.
If you've never read Nevada Barr, you can read Destroyer Angel as a standalone because it is pretty complete on its own; however, longtime fans of the series are really going to savor Anna's tactics since we know her from earlier books. This was a book I had to tear myself away from forcibly. The second time I sat down with it, I stayed glued to the pages until the end. Welcome back, Anna! I missed you!
This book succeeds as both thriller and adventure story, but what makes it special are the women. Unarmed, with no food, and a gargantuan task ahead of her, Anna goes feral in an attempt to get the job done. Introduced in an earlier book, I was happy to see the changes Heath and her adopted daughter Elizabeth have undergone. Peppering up the gumbo are Leah, a woman more used to living in her mind than dealing with humans, and her spoiled daughter Katie. The interactions of the four kidnapped females are fascinating as they go through the various stages of fear, hunger, and exhaustion. Can they rise above being mere victims? I'll leave that for you to discover.
If you've never read Nevada Barr, you can read Destroyer Angel as a standalone because it is pretty complete on its own; however, longtime fans of the series are really going to savor Anna's tactics since we know her from earlier books. This was a book I had to tear myself away from forcibly. The second time I sat down with it, I stayed glued to the pages until the end. Welcome back, Anna! I missed you!
April 1, 2024
I'm a little harsh with my rating for this, the 18th Anna Pigeon outing, published in 2014. This was a Jack Reacher-type thriller with Ranger Anna vs. some scumbags in the wilderness. We're in the North Woods, northern Minnesota, the land of forests, rivers and lakes. It's not the Boundary Waters but unnamed National Forest land. I've enjoyed this series immensely because each book has been set in a different national park and we learn about the parks ( most of which I have not visited!). But I feel such a sense of place was sorely missing.
Overall, a good thriller. However, I felt it began to drag as it went past 250 pages...3 stars
Overall, a good thriller. However, I felt it began to drag as it went past 250 pages...3 stars
April 10, 2014
Ranger Anna Piegon is on vacation with a female friend and her stepdaughter. While Anna seeks some solitude one day, her companions are kidnapped by four men with sinister purposes. Anna has only two days to rescue her friends in a remote wilderness area. I did not feel that this book was up to the standards of Ms Barr's previous works of the series.
April 20, 2014
I have read all of Nevada Barr and it saddens me to find an Anna Pigeon story whose characters were purchased (cheaply) at 'Stereotypes R Us'; the paraplegic, the oppositional teenage girl, the unprepared and helpless women, the pedophile, the asperger's mom, the closeted gay, and oh yes, special today on isle 4, the whistling-through-the-graveyard black man, complete with "a spade is a spade" joke on page 205. Shame on you Nevada Barr. I can bear stereotypes, I cannot bear racism. You've lost me.
March 28, 2014
In "Destroyer Angel," Nevada Barr channels Lee Child. Anna Pigeon finds her inner Jack Reacher. Not that Anna wasn't tough before. She's tough in a real way, not a cartoon like Reacher. There is no mystery here, just Anna in a bad spot from the get-go.
In this corner, Anna and her four female wilderness exploring friends. Two teenagers, one paraplegic, one “mad scientist.” And an old dog.
In that corner, four thugs. One is “scum for hire,” even in the view of the leader. Another is a “low-end drug dealer” who owes the bookies big-time. Another is “small-time muscle.” Shocking but true: they don’t all get along.
The bad guys have some sort of plan but it isn’t entirely clear. They are certainly after Anna & Co. Mostly the Co. The plan evolves. There’s a landing strip they need to locate, a plane due soon for a pick-up and woods in which to get lost.
When the story starts, Anna is off on the river by herself so when she returns to camp and realizes her friends have been joined by some extremely grumpy company, guess who must save the day?
I don’t have a spreadsheet handy from the 17 other Anna Pigeon novels (and I haven’t read them all) but I do believe Ms. Pigeon inflicts more damage on the creeps here than in any other previous adventure. She also suffers more wounds and oozes more blood.
With Nevada Barr’s tasty prose leading the way and Anna’s unique insights available to us at every bloody turn, Destroyer Angel cruises along. Amid the action, Barr’s unique style and Anna’s strong voice ring through. “The air was a delicate balance. The last of summer rested on the skin as the prickle of coming winter brushed the mind. Anna could taste the fertile loamy scent of leaves, fall and readying to return to the earth, and the lingering smell of warm grass, dust, and pine. Mated with the spicy scent of campfire smoke, it triggered a longing for sometime, someplace, someone that never existed, but was nonetheless exquisite, and to be deliciously mourned.”
The straight storyline rarely stops for a breath, but what pulls us along is Anna’s ongoing inner monologue—a frothy mix of wry humor, thoughts on god and references to forgotten movies such as “Little Big Man” or the lumberjack bit from Monty Python.
At the outset of Destroyer Angel, Pigeon is able to save the lone old dog from the bad guys so Anna and the pup form a pair of wounded soldiers who work together. There is a lot of talking to the dog and expressionless reactions from the canine.
Plausibility is dunked, briefly, in the cold waters of the river. The bad guys are appropriately dumb and appropriately chicken at the right times. Bears and wolves, oh my. Bullets fly, clouds descend, snippets of conversation are overheard at just the right time and poisonous mushrooms are pocketed for future use. That dog knows just when to be quiet.
And Anna slogs on. No “mystery” here. No red herrings or clue-finding (maybe a bit at the beginning). It’s Anna Pigeon versus nature and four oafs. Who says the women can’t get tough as nails? Who?
In this corner, Anna and her four female wilderness exploring friends. Two teenagers, one paraplegic, one “mad scientist.” And an old dog.
In that corner, four thugs. One is “scum for hire,” even in the view of the leader. Another is a “low-end drug dealer” who owes the bookies big-time. Another is “small-time muscle.” Shocking but true: they don’t all get along.
The bad guys have some sort of plan but it isn’t entirely clear. They are certainly after Anna & Co. Mostly the Co. The plan evolves. There’s a landing strip they need to locate, a plane due soon for a pick-up and woods in which to get lost.
When the story starts, Anna is off on the river by herself so when she returns to camp and realizes her friends have been joined by some extremely grumpy company, guess who must save the day?
I don’t have a spreadsheet handy from the 17 other Anna Pigeon novels (and I haven’t read them all) but I do believe Ms. Pigeon inflicts more damage on the creeps here than in any other previous adventure. She also suffers more wounds and oozes more blood.
With Nevada Barr’s tasty prose leading the way and Anna’s unique insights available to us at every bloody turn, Destroyer Angel cruises along. Amid the action, Barr’s unique style and Anna’s strong voice ring through. “The air was a delicate balance. The last of summer rested on the skin as the prickle of coming winter brushed the mind. Anna could taste the fertile loamy scent of leaves, fall and readying to return to the earth, and the lingering smell of warm grass, dust, and pine. Mated with the spicy scent of campfire smoke, it triggered a longing for sometime, someplace, someone that never existed, but was nonetheless exquisite, and to be deliciously mourned.”
The straight storyline rarely stops for a breath, but what pulls us along is Anna’s ongoing inner monologue—a frothy mix of wry humor, thoughts on god and references to forgotten movies such as “Little Big Man” or the lumberjack bit from Monty Python.
At the outset of Destroyer Angel, Pigeon is able to save the lone old dog from the bad guys so Anna and the pup form a pair of wounded soldiers who work together. There is a lot of talking to the dog and expressionless reactions from the canine.
Plausibility is dunked, briefly, in the cold waters of the river. The bad guys are appropriately dumb and appropriately chicken at the right times. Bears and wolves, oh my. Bullets fly, clouds descend, snippets of conversation are overheard at just the right time and poisonous mushrooms are pocketed for future use. That dog knows just when to be quiet.
And Anna slogs on. No “mystery” here. No red herrings or clue-finding (maybe a bit at the beginning). It’s Anna Pigeon versus nature and four oafs. Who says the women can’t get tough as nails? Who?
April 13, 2014
Nevada Barr is another of those authors who seem very nice on the outside, but must have some VERY dark things in her head. This, in my opinion, is one of the best Anna Pigeon novel in a few years. If anything, Barr's novels get a little more dark and disturbing with each new one -- but they are so engrossing, suspenseful and wonderfully readable that waiting for her next one can be pure torture. If you have never read any of the Anna P. series, may I suggest starting with either "A Superior Death," or "Firestorm," if you do, you may find yourself reading the other fifteen, including "Destroyer Angel," in quick succession. [NOTE: the first novel is actually, "Track of the Cat," but that is not her best, hence why I recommend starting with one of the next two]. Aside from the adventure/mysteries, reading Pigeon will also give you a new appreciation of our National Park system and other parts of America's near-wilderness areas.
April 6, 2014
Moderately entertaining despite being quite preposterous. The writing is choked with senseless analogies for the first third of the book. Anna repeatedly hides in plain sight, suffers endless injuries, and communicates on a spiritual level with a dog. The criminals are too easily duped. Basically this is a backwoods fantasy story for women.
April 19, 2014
Holy crap, I loved this book. All of Nevada's trademark tools are out of the box in this one. Highly recommend.
May 3, 2014
*2.5 stars. Usually I really enjoy the Anna Pigeon mysteries. I just didn't find this one very interesting. It dragged and too much time was spent with the non-Anna characters. Nevertheless, here are quotes I appreciated:
"The only earth the meek inherited was six feet down and capped by a stone" (5).
"When it came to fundamental criminal activities, Charles doubted if he could steal a peek at a nudist camp" (5).
"The air was a delicate balance. The last summer rested on the skin as the prickle of coming winter brushed the mind" (14).
"Money was like sugar; too much of it sickened people" (15).
"They needed to believe the impossible: that there was an end to suffering, that their emptiness would be filled. That they were loved" (16).
"Tracking everything from grizzly bears to skunks, she'd become convinced animals could sense a clamorous mind. People, not so much…" (29).
"On a canvas of exposed roots and rocks, firelight painted a stairway that might have been done on one of Dali's bad days" (29).
"…either liked the look or hadn't bothered to update his perception in thirty years" (31).
"It was more like the sound Heath imagined when characters in Dickens's books said, 'Harrumph'" (41).
"Time and life were the only true riches humans had" (44).
"Greed was like hope on steroids, ready to see the object of desire where it did not exist" (70).
"One never had to hide from numbers. In math two plus two always equaled four. In English literature two plus two could equal two above ground, one in a tomb, and one swallowing poison. Philosophy, sociology--the studies of why people felt as they did and did as they did--were even worse" (72).
"Of course she had heard the word 'fuck' before. She'd just never heard it used as a verb, a noun, and an adjective, often in a single sentence" (106-107).
"The apple showed nearly as much courage as the tree" (129).
"…her skin had faded to the color of an old chamois cloth, hard used and much laundered…" (135-136).
"Sean started putting on his shoes with a slowness that would have done a recalcitrant four-year-old proud" (144).
“People who held up the Bible and proclaimed their belief in God, then denied Lucifer and his demons were cherry picking. God didn’t work like that. Charles had always known he couldn’t take only the good parts of anything. Without darkness, light was meaningless. Without Satan, God was nothing but a schizophrenic with a cruel streak” (161).
“Anna found money an alien concept. In the real world a hot bath, an apple, a cup of tea: Those things were real” (168).
“Dog nose paid off before human eye” (168).
"…damp and lichen drew faces on the stones" (186).
"Reg was performing a remarkable feat; he was whining in a baritone, and with bravado" (186).
“In the bottom ran a shallow stream; the music she’d heard earlier” (189).
"Night did not so much fall as thicken imperceptibly around the trees and bushes" (246).
“No crunching of a man trying to navigate the night woods followed” (247).
“God is good, Heath thought. Then, considering the situation, amended it to: God is not as rotten as he could have been” (251).
“She crossed and entered again into the midnight of trees” (256).
"To wear a jacket like that in a tiny airplane put Leah in mind of a lab tech she'd worked with who wore full motorcycle leathers when he rode his 49 cc scooter to work" (282).
“Even though Heath couldn’t feel it, there could be no harm in warming the blood headed back up to her friend’s heart” (288).
"The only earth the meek inherited was six feet down and capped by a stone" (5).
"When it came to fundamental criminal activities, Charles doubted if he could steal a peek at a nudist camp" (5).
"The air was a delicate balance. The last summer rested on the skin as the prickle of coming winter brushed the mind" (14).
"Money was like sugar; too much of it sickened people" (15).
"They needed to believe the impossible: that there was an end to suffering, that their emptiness would be filled. That they were loved" (16).
"Tracking everything from grizzly bears to skunks, she'd become convinced animals could sense a clamorous mind. People, not so much…" (29).
"On a canvas of exposed roots and rocks, firelight painted a stairway that might have been done on one of Dali's bad days" (29).
"…either liked the look or hadn't bothered to update his perception in thirty years" (31).
"It was more like the sound Heath imagined when characters in Dickens's books said, 'Harrumph'" (41).
"Time and life were the only true riches humans had" (44).
"Greed was like hope on steroids, ready to see the object of desire where it did not exist" (70).
"One never had to hide from numbers. In math two plus two always equaled four. In English literature two plus two could equal two above ground, one in a tomb, and one swallowing poison. Philosophy, sociology--the studies of why people felt as they did and did as they did--were even worse" (72).
"Of course she had heard the word 'fuck' before. She'd just never heard it used as a verb, a noun, and an adjective, often in a single sentence" (106-107).
"The apple showed nearly as much courage as the tree" (129).
"…her skin had faded to the color of an old chamois cloth, hard used and much laundered…" (135-136).
"Sean started putting on his shoes with a slowness that would have done a recalcitrant four-year-old proud" (144).
“People who held up the Bible and proclaimed their belief in God, then denied Lucifer and his demons were cherry picking. God didn’t work like that. Charles had always known he couldn’t take only the good parts of anything. Without darkness, light was meaningless. Without Satan, God was nothing but a schizophrenic with a cruel streak” (161).
“Anna found money an alien concept. In the real world a hot bath, an apple, a cup of tea: Those things were real” (168).
“Dog nose paid off before human eye” (168).
"…damp and lichen drew faces on the stones" (186).
"Reg was performing a remarkable feat; he was whining in a baritone, and with bravado" (186).
“In the bottom ran a shallow stream; the music she’d heard earlier” (189).
"Night did not so much fall as thicken imperceptibly around the trees and bushes" (246).
“No crunching of a man trying to navigate the night woods followed” (247).
“God is good, Heath thought. Then, considering the situation, amended it to: God is not as rotten as he could have been” (251).
“She crossed and entered again into the midnight of trees” (256).
"To wear a jacket like that in a tiny airplane put Leah in mind of a lab tech she'd worked with who wore full motorcycle leathers when he rode his 49 cc scooter to work" (282).
“Even though Heath couldn’t feel it, there could be no harm in warming the blood headed back up to her friend’s heart” (288).
April 6, 2014
Do. Not. Mess. With Anna Pigeon.
There is little mystery here, it's mostly a survival thriller in the northern woods of Minnesota. The characters are all well done, unique, with quirks and issues. Even the dog was cool.
While other entries in this series have had Anna survive in the wild, usually the enemy is unknown, or at least mysterious. This time, the bad guys are just - bad. So Anna has to deal with them. And she does. Forcefully. Cleverly. Permanently.
This is a darker Anna in a tough situation, but she's still the person you'd like to be your trail guide, just about anywhere in North America.
There is little mystery here, it's mostly a survival thriller in the northern woods of Minnesota. The characters are all well done, unique, with quirks and issues. Even the dog was cool.
While other entries in this series have had Anna survive in the wild, usually the enemy is unknown, or at least mysterious. This time, the bad guys are just - bad. So Anna has to deal with them. And she does. Forcefully. Cleverly. Permanently.
This is a darker Anna in a tough situation, but she's still the person you'd like to be your trail guide, just about anywhere in North America.
October 22, 2022
In the next to last book in Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon series, the park ranger sets out for a "vacation" camping trip with friends in the Iron Range of upstate Minnesota. Anyone who follows this series knows that vacations for Anna are inevitably anything but. Destroyer Angel is no exception.
Her companions are Heath, a paraplegic woman; Leah, a wealthy designer of outdoor equipment (who created Heath's super amazing wheel chair) and also on the spectrum; two teenage girls; and a really cool dog.
Soon enough the villains arrive, intending to kidnap Leah for ransom. Anna is in a different position in this one, always hiding in the woods and secretly following the others while sabotaging the bad guys. The dog is her only ally.
So, plenty of issues as always, but the women and the girls, despite much violence against them, are Nevada Barr's answer to men hurting women.
Each book is this series gets more heart-pounding than the previous ones. This one borders on horror, though that has always been present. I will be sad to read the final book but I suspect the author needed a vacation herself!
Her companions are Heath, a paraplegic woman; Leah, a wealthy designer of outdoor equipment (who created Heath's super amazing wheel chair) and also on the spectrum; two teenage girls; and a really cool dog.
Soon enough the villains arrive, intending to kidnap Leah for ransom. Anna is in a different position in this one, always hiding in the woods and secretly following the others while sabotaging the bad guys. The dog is her only ally.
So, plenty of issues as always, but the women and the girls, despite much violence against them, are Nevada Barr's answer to men hurting women.
Each book is this series gets more heart-pounding than the previous ones. This one borders on horror, though that has always been present. I will be sad to read the final book but I suspect the author needed a vacation herself!
April 21, 2020
I had expected a story that would travel more physical distance and instead enjoyed one that traveled a mental expanse.
In Destroyer Angel, Nevada Barr brings back characters I first met in Hard Truth. Hard Truth was my first introduction to Anna Pigeon, Heath and Nevada Barr. It was 2006 and I had just moved to Colorful Colorado where the events of Hard Truth take place in Rocky Mountain National Park. A friend recommended the book for several reasons that I was personally connected to, specifically: Colorado setting, disability and Mormonism. I loved Hard Truth. I've since read additional Nevada Barr titles - Anna Pigeon and stand-alone novels. Fourteen years after reading Hard Truth, I was thrilled to open Destroyer Angel and be greeted by familiar characters & Colorado references.
Favorite Passages:
All forms of sorrow and delight, All solemn Voices of the Night. The words seemed to form from the soughing of the wind in the dying leaves. The mystical ululation of a loon, a sound that seemed to Anna to linger on the water long after the bird had ceased to call, punctuated the thought.
Longfellow? Frost?
The air was a delicate balance. The last of summer rested on the skin as the prickle of coming winter brushed the mind. Anna could taste the fertile loamy scent of leaves, fallen and readying to return to the earth, and the lingering smell of warm grass, dust, and pine. Mated with the spicy scent of campfire smoke, it triggered a longing for sometime, someplace, someone that never existed, but was nonetheless exquisite, and to be deliciously mourned.
_______
Paul Davidson enjoyed the simple gift of faith.
When Anna asked him in what way and why, he said people needed to believe in something. Not necessarily the patriarchal smiting god, or the white-washed westernized vision of the carpenter's son, not even in miracles. In the twenty-first century miracles were commonplace. People couldn't get excited over a man walking on water when they'd seen a man walking on the moon. Paul's contention was that to fend off despair and embrace life, humanity needed to move beyond miracles. They needed to believe the impossible: that there was an end to suffering, that their emptiness would be filled. That they were loved.
_______
A man in a bunny suit, shooting blanks from a revolver in one hand and waving a carrot in the other, charged into a Crime Scene Investigation class. He hopped around the room and out the door. When the students' eyewitness accounts were read aloud, they did not agree on whether the shooter was black or white, male or female, if it was a rabbit or a kangaroo, or how many shots were fired. The only thing on which they agreed was that the intruder had guns in both hands.
The point: Eyewitnesses were unreliable.
_______
. . . she couldn't tell where she ended and the dog began, where reality ended and nightmare began.
_______
Two teenaged girls, a slightly mad scientist, a paraplegic, and an old dog: Anybody who would prey on such as these would stomp kittens and dry-swallow ducklings.
_______
The dude said nothing. He stepped closer, melding in with the dark canopy of leaves, as tall and unknowable as a giant redwood. Nostrils flared back. Cavernous eyes were deep behind cheekbones sharp as knives. Heath was seeing not the man but the skull under the flesh. Nothing shone behind the eye sockets, nothing. Windows to the soul opening onto a room inhabited by cobwebs and cockroaches.
_______
A self-proclaimed witch, she told Anna that smudging, plus a spell or two, warded off psychic attacks.
_______
"The Algonquin Indians believe that if a person ever resorts to cannibalism - like the Donner Party - the demon of the windigo takes them over. Afterward they crave human flesh. They hunt the woods of these parts at night." Heath said.
"It's not a demon, Mom. That's stupid," Elizabeth said. "It's like an infection. The reason the stories happen is happen is because the winters are so bad up here, people do eat people and get infected."
It's just a myth," Heath said to Reg.
"There was that guy in Duluth . . . ," Elizabeth said.
"That was never proven," Heath returned.
_______
Heath was no longer screaming on the outside. Inside, every nerve shrieked, an internal cacophony that scrambled thought. Her skull burned; her brain matter was made of double-edged razors.
_______
The knife was not in her hand but of her hand . . . Anna sprang, the knife held over her head in the pose Anthony Perkins made famous in Psycho.
_______
. . . the lovely image of her two hands pulling a bootlace tightly around his neck and holding it until he was dead shined like a magic lantern on the walls of her mind.
_______
Sean was an ugly man. Ugly in face, in body, and in mind. Myopic, overweight, shorter than average: He'd been born either to serve Satan as a half-assed monster, or the Lord as a court jester.
______
Lying in the fragrant damp of Minnesota's woods, dressed in a coat stiffened with the blood of a dead man, Anna found money an alien concept. In the real world a hot bath, an apple, a cup of tea: Those things were real. Money was as meaningless as hula hoops and nose rings. Few lived in a real world anymore. They'd made a new world where symbols were more valuable than the things they stood for.
______
The forest around them ended. Ahead lay a black-and-gray mausoleum of what had once been an ecosystem. Inches of gray ash covered the ground. Tree trunks were black and scored like coal. Quiescent, and sinister as alligators, logs lay beneath a sea of ash. Teeth of stone, black with soot, poked from gray gums of hills.
As the seven of them traversed this T.S. Eliot world, their feet churned up eddies of featherlike ash that coated the inside of the nose and clung on the back of the throat.
_______
At present, reality was a bitch. They were pretending to be stronger and braver than they were.
Maybe that was all courage was, pretending not to be afraid, and taking the next necessary step.
_______
Anna gazed at the view until mist clouded her mind. Hypnotized by the soft patter of rain, her vision blurred, and for a while she was flying over the burned land. A cold front was boiling in from the north, clearing the rain before it. The winds carried her up. Spiraling over the blackened earth, she saw specks of humanity on the ash, and the golden brown of living forest around the perimeter. Somewhere a large cat was purring.
_______
Running as quietly as a rabbit across the rain-damp duff, she kept on a parallel course. It was an hour or two until dark. The light was diffuse and low with tails of fog clinging to the ground as the air cooled more quickly than the earth. The forest had become a place of mists and pools without light. Unformed shadows painted trees; damp and lichen drew faces on the stones. From the dying leaves, raindrops fell in slow motion, hitting the soggy forest floor with the splat of baby frogs hitting pond water.
_______
Making a circle behind the deadfall, they approached the boulders form the side of the burn. The northern-most boulder was by far the larger of the two, or had been. Repeated rains and freezes had worked on its veins. Pieces of stone, form as small as a toaster to the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, had been pried loose. Fallen, they lay around the boulder's base like the skirts of a curtsying maiden.
_______
Torrents of weakness drowned her. With them came a thousand gossamer threads connecting her to that which was not animal but apart, the thing called humanity: Christmas carols, kisses, high school rings, private jokes, good food, laughter, bad puns, guitar riffs, clean sheets, Paul's smile, s'mores, holding hands with her sister, winks across the room, mowing grass, feeding her dog Taco, taking out the trash, rereading Desert Solitaire, buying red silk underwear, being disappointed and amazed, lonely and in love.
Bright paper packages.
Whiskers on kittens.
It was not God who created Man, but Mankind that held itself together when God would drag it piecemeal back into the natural world of tides, seasons, and dancing to the movement of glaciers and the shifting of continental plates.
Declaring one's humanity complicated life, made transactions more difficult. Cats ate small helpless tweety birds, and cats were okay with that. Coyotes slaughtered adorable lambkins. Deer razed old men's tomato gardens to the ground. There was no remorse; they did not second-guess themselves, or waste time parsing motives. A bear did not wonder if she was good bear or a bad bear, if she was fair or just or kind. A bear ate, slept, mated, defended her young, lived and died without self-recrimination. Only people did that. The past was never over; the present was lost in planning for a future that promised nothing but proof of mortality.
_______
Anna's disintegration into humanity continued. This was a bad time for it. There were things that needed to be done, people who needed to be killed.
_______
Anna counted the separate pieces of liter the dickheads had strewn about the landscape. Wrappings, bags napkins, juice boxes, straws, plastic utensils, packages of salt and mustard and mayonnaise.
Litterbugs.
"What's the penalty for littering, Ranger Pigeon?"
"Death, you slovenly pig."
_______
Determination was wavering when she saw the light, literally. A spark of orange no bigger than a firefly flickered when she looked over her shoulder. Lest the disappointment be too great, she told herself it was a hallucination. Several more hard-won feet told her it wasn't. She'd made it to a clearing. A hundred yards or more away, at the opposite end of the field, a fire had been lit.
_______
The black box theater blew into shocking life. Darkness shattered into the shape of a man on fire, a creature of fire, crying high and wild and waving its arms. A human torch staggering like a mummy, reaching for an end to pain or a victim for it.
_______
Utter stillness descended. With it, unexpectedly, clarity. Total clarity of mind: Leah had not known her mind was fogged, but it had been for years and years. Intricate puzzles, schematics, and plans had filled it like cobwebs filling an abandoned house. Ideas and numbers ran along the strands of the web. She shepherded them, pruned them, deleted them, perfected them. Never was her mind still.
_______
The near distance quivered and shuddered as if there were a rift in the time-space continuum.
_______
"Anna." Her name was breathed on a cold wind from the north. A windigo was whispering, calling her to dinner. "Anna." It was walking up behind her on its burned stumps of feet.
_______
Demons did exist, did possess people and, on occasion, animals. Even if the Bible hadn't gone into such detail regarding demons, Charles knew from experience that that much was true. He also knew it was rare in the modern world. Not because demons had gone the way of the dodo and the passenger pigeon. Demons walked the streets and rode the subways in greater numbers than at any time in previous history.
Thy name is legion, Charles thought and sipped his whiskey.
Possession was rare in modern times because demons had no need to possess a resisting soul anymore. Millions of souls were awaiting with arms outstretched to welcome demons in. Why go mano a mano with Max von Sydow when boys with automatic weapons are just begging for a chance to slaughter little children by the score?
In Destroyer Angel, Nevada Barr brings back characters I first met in Hard Truth. Hard Truth was my first introduction to Anna Pigeon, Heath and Nevada Barr. It was 2006 and I had just moved to Colorful Colorado where the events of Hard Truth take place in Rocky Mountain National Park. A friend recommended the book for several reasons that I was personally connected to, specifically: Colorado setting, disability and Mormonism. I loved Hard Truth. I've since read additional Nevada Barr titles - Anna Pigeon and stand-alone novels. Fourteen years after reading Hard Truth, I was thrilled to open Destroyer Angel and be greeted by familiar characters & Colorado references.
Favorite Passages:
All forms of sorrow and delight, All solemn Voices of the Night. The words seemed to form from the soughing of the wind in the dying leaves. The mystical ululation of a loon, a sound that seemed to Anna to linger on the water long after the bird had ceased to call, punctuated the thought.
Longfellow? Frost?
The air was a delicate balance. The last of summer rested on the skin as the prickle of coming winter brushed the mind. Anna could taste the fertile loamy scent of leaves, fallen and readying to return to the earth, and the lingering smell of warm grass, dust, and pine. Mated with the spicy scent of campfire smoke, it triggered a longing for sometime, someplace, someone that never existed, but was nonetheless exquisite, and to be deliciously mourned.
_______
Paul Davidson enjoyed the simple gift of faith.
When Anna asked him in what way and why, he said people needed to believe in something. Not necessarily the patriarchal smiting god, or the white-washed westernized vision of the carpenter's son, not even in miracles. In the twenty-first century miracles were commonplace. People couldn't get excited over a man walking on water when they'd seen a man walking on the moon. Paul's contention was that to fend off despair and embrace life, humanity needed to move beyond miracles. They needed to believe the impossible: that there was an end to suffering, that their emptiness would be filled. That they were loved.
_______
A man in a bunny suit, shooting blanks from a revolver in one hand and waving a carrot in the other, charged into a Crime Scene Investigation class. He hopped around the room and out the door. When the students' eyewitness accounts were read aloud, they did not agree on whether the shooter was black or white, male or female, if it was a rabbit or a kangaroo, or how many shots were fired. The only thing on which they agreed was that the intruder had guns in both hands.
The point: Eyewitnesses were unreliable.
_______
. . . she couldn't tell where she ended and the dog began, where reality ended and nightmare began.
_______
Two teenaged girls, a slightly mad scientist, a paraplegic, and an old dog: Anybody who would prey on such as these would stomp kittens and dry-swallow ducklings.
_______
The dude said nothing. He stepped closer, melding in with the dark canopy of leaves, as tall and unknowable as a giant redwood. Nostrils flared back. Cavernous eyes were deep behind cheekbones sharp as knives. Heath was seeing not the man but the skull under the flesh. Nothing shone behind the eye sockets, nothing. Windows to the soul opening onto a room inhabited by cobwebs and cockroaches.
_______
A self-proclaimed witch, she told Anna that smudging, plus a spell or two, warded off psychic attacks.
_______
"The Algonquin Indians believe that if a person ever resorts to cannibalism - like the Donner Party - the demon of the windigo takes them over. Afterward they crave human flesh. They hunt the woods of these parts at night." Heath said.
"It's not a demon, Mom. That's stupid," Elizabeth said. "It's like an infection. The reason the stories happen is happen is because the winters are so bad up here, people do eat people and get infected."
It's just a myth," Heath said to Reg.
"There was that guy in Duluth . . . ," Elizabeth said.
"That was never proven," Heath returned.
_______
Heath was no longer screaming on the outside. Inside, every nerve shrieked, an internal cacophony that scrambled thought. Her skull burned; her brain matter was made of double-edged razors.
_______
The knife was not in her hand but of her hand . . . Anna sprang, the knife held over her head in the pose Anthony Perkins made famous in Psycho.
_______
. . . the lovely image of her two hands pulling a bootlace tightly around his neck and holding it until he was dead shined like a magic lantern on the walls of her mind.
_______
Sean was an ugly man. Ugly in face, in body, and in mind. Myopic, overweight, shorter than average: He'd been born either to serve Satan as a half-assed monster, or the Lord as a court jester.
______
Lying in the fragrant damp of Minnesota's woods, dressed in a coat stiffened with the blood of a dead man, Anna found money an alien concept. In the real world a hot bath, an apple, a cup of tea: Those things were real. Money was as meaningless as hula hoops and nose rings. Few lived in a real world anymore. They'd made a new world where symbols were more valuable than the things they stood for.
______
The forest around them ended. Ahead lay a black-and-gray mausoleum of what had once been an ecosystem. Inches of gray ash covered the ground. Tree trunks were black and scored like coal. Quiescent, and sinister as alligators, logs lay beneath a sea of ash. Teeth of stone, black with soot, poked from gray gums of hills.
As the seven of them traversed this T.S. Eliot world, their feet churned up eddies of featherlike ash that coated the inside of the nose and clung on the back of the throat.
_______
At present, reality was a bitch. They were pretending to be stronger and braver than they were.
Maybe that was all courage was, pretending not to be afraid, and taking the next necessary step.
_______
Anna gazed at the view until mist clouded her mind. Hypnotized by the soft patter of rain, her vision blurred, and for a while she was flying over the burned land. A cold front was boiling in from the north, clearing the rain before it. The winds carried her up. Spiraling over the blackened earth, she saw specks of humanity on the ash, and the golden brown of living forest around the perimeter. Somewhere a large cat was purring.
_______
Running as quietly as a rabbit across the rain-damp duff, she kept on a parallel course. It was an hour or two until dark. The light was diffuse and low with tails of fog clinging to the ground as the air cooled more quickly than the earth. The forest had become a place of mists and pools without light. Unformed shadows painted trees; damp and lichen drew faces on the stones. From the dying leaves, raindrops fell in slow motion, hitting the soggy forest floor with the splat of baby frogs hitting pond water.
_______
Making a circle behind the deadfall, they approached the boulders form the side of the burn. The northern-most boulder was by far the larger of the two, or had been. Repeated rains and freezes had worked on its veins. Pieces of stone, form as small as a toaster to the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, had been pried loose. Fallen, they lay around the boulder's base like the skirts of a curtsying maiden.
_______
Torrents of weakness drowned her. With them came a thousand gossamer threads connecting her to that which was not animal but apart, the thing called humanity: Christmas carols, kisses, high school rings, private jokes, good food, laughter, bad puns, guitar riffs, clean sheets, Paul's smile, s'mores, holding hands with her sister, winks across the room, mowing grass, feeding her dog Taco, taking out the trash, rereading Desert Solitaire, buying red silk underwear, being disappointed and amazed, lonely and in love.
Bright paper packages.
Whiskers on kittens.
It was not God who created Man, but Mankind that held itself together when God would drag it piecemeal back into the natural world of tides, seasons, and dancing to the movement of glaciers and the shifting of continental plates.
Declaring one's humanity complicated life, made transactions more difficult. Cats ate small helpless tweety birds, and cats were okay with that. Coyotes slaughtered adorable lambkins. Deer razed old men's tomato gardens to the ground. There was no remorse; they did not second-guess themselves, or waste time parsing motives. A bear did not wonder if she was good bear or a bad bear, if she was fair or just or kind. A bear ate, slept, mated, defended her young, lived and died without self-recrimination. Only people did that. The past was never over; the present was lost in planning for a future that promised nothing but proof of mortality.
_______
Anna's disintegration into humanity continued. This was a bad time for it. There were things that needed to be done, people who needed to be killed.
_______
Anna counted the separate pieces of liter the dickheads had strewn about the landscape. Wrappings, bags napkins, juice boxes, straws, plastic utensils, packages of salt and mustard and mayonnaise.
Litterbugs.
"What's the penalty for littering, Ranger Pigeon?"
"Death, you slovenly pig."
_______
Determination was wavering when she saw the light, literally. A spark of orange no bigger than a firefly flickered when she looked over her shoulder. Lest the disappointment be too great, she told herself it was a hallucination. Several more hard-won feet told her it wasn't. She'd made it to a clearing. A hundred yards or more away, at the opposite end of the field, a fire had been lit.
_______
The black box theater blew into shocking life. Darkness shattered into the shape of a man on fire, a creature of fire, crying high and wild and waving its arms. A human torch staggering like a mummy, reaching for an end to pain or a victim for it.
_______
Utter stillness descended. With it, unexpectedly, clarity. Total clarity of mind: Leah had not known her mind was fogged, but it had been for years and years. Intricate puzzles, schematics, and plans had filled it like cobwebs filling an abandoned house. Ideas and numbers ran along the strands of the web. She shepherded them, pruned them, deleted them, perfected them. Never was her mind still.
_______
The near distance quivered and shuddered as if there were a rift in the time-space continuum.
_______
"Anna." Her name was breathed on a cold wind from the north. A windigo was whispering, calling her to dinner. "Anna." It was walking up behind her on its burned stumps of feet.
_______
Demons did exist, did possess people and, on occasion, animals. Even if the Bible hadn't gone into such detail regarding demons, Charles knew from experience that that much was true. He also knew it was rare in the modern world. Not because demons had gone the way of the dodo and the passenger pigeon. Demons walked the streets and rode the subways in greater numbers than at any time in previous history.
Thy name is legion, Charles thought and sipped his whiskey.
Possession was rare in modern times because demons had no need to possess a resisting soul anymore. Millions of souls were awaiting with arms outstretched to welcome demons in. Why go mano a mano with Max von Sydow when boys with automatic weapons are just begging for a chance to slaughter little children by the score?
November 4, 2016
This is perhaps the best Anna Pigeon book I have read yet. These books can follow a somewhat predictable formula. On that score, Destroyer Angel is no different. What makes this book different are the characters and the story itself.
The book starts out with 5 women: Heath and her 15 year old daughter Elizabeth (aka "E"), Leah and her 13 year old daughter Katie and Anna. Heath is a paraplegic that is wheel chair bound. She is somewhat estranged from her daughter. Leah is a rich and a genius who designs outdoor equipment. Leah is not really into emotions--they are not logical. So, her relationship with Katie is not a real close mother and daughter type of a relationship. Oh, there is Wiley, E's loyal dog. They are all out in the woods to relax and to try Leah's prototype outdoor wheel chair.
While Anna is out enjoying a canoe float, four men arrive to kidnap the women. Leah being the person of most interest. The ladies don't tell the bad guys (one named "The Dude") Anna is with them. Anna arrives in camp incognito and assesses the situation.
There are the "normal" hardships of being hostages: being restrained with plastic zip ties, no food, etc. There is a trek involved bushwhacking through the woods to remote airstrip where they will be picked up. Anna follows after them trying to figure out what she can do to stop the kidnappers without getting anyone else hurt. One twist in the story is the bad guys are "city thugs" not accustomed to their outdoor situation. There is a fun and entertaining dialog between Anna and Wiley the dog.
I think what makes this story more captivating for me than the "typical" hostage thriller is the evolution each woman goes through over the course of the trek through the woods. There is also a pretty good back story on each of the bad guys too. We get some insight on their behavior. This folds in nicely with whole story.
I listened to the audio book and Barbara Rosenblat does a great job with all the characters. She brings the book to life. Barbara has a deep gravelly type of voice that takes a little getting used to at first. After awhile though, she gets absorbed into the telling of the story.
I'm not reading the Anna Pigeon books in sequence. While there may be some lost info along the way, it did not impact at all my enjoyment of the book. This is one great and entertaining thriller!
The book starts out with 5 women: Heath and her 15 year old daughter Elizabeth (aka "E"), Leah and her 13 year old daughter Katie and Anna. Heath is a paraplegic that is wheel chair bound. She is somewhat estranged from her daughter. Leah is a rich and a genius who designs outdoor equipment. Leah is not really into emotions--they are not logical. So, her relationship with Katie is not a real close mother and daughter type of a relationship. Oh, there is Wiley, E's loyal dog. They are all out in the woods to relax and to try Leah's prototype outdoor wheel chair.
While Anna is out enjoying a canoe float, four men arrive to kidnap the women. Leah being the person of most interest. The ladies don't tell the bad guys (one named "The Dude") Anna is with them. Anna arrives in camp incognito and assesses the situation.
There are the "normal" hardships of being hostages: being restrained with plastic zip ties, no food, etc. There is a trek involved bushwhacking through the woods to remote airstrip where they will be picked up. Anna follows after them trying to figure out what she can do to stop the kidnappers without getting anyone else hurt. One twist in the story is the bad guys are "city thugs" not accustomed to their outdoor situation. There is a fun and entertaining dialog between Anna and Wiley the dog.
I think what makes this story more captivating for me than the "typical" hostage thriller is the evolution each woman goes through over the course of the trek through the woods. There is also a pretty good back story on each of the bad guys too. We get some insight on their behavior. This folds in nicely with whole story.
I listened to the audio book and Barbara Rosenblat does a great job with all the characters. She brings the book to life. Barbara has a deep gravelly type of voice that takes a little getting used to at first. After awhile though, she gets absorbed into the telling of the story.
I'm not reading the Anna Pigeon books in sequence. While there may be some lost info along the way, it did not impact at all my enjoyment of the book. This is one great and entertaining thriller!
April 30, 2014
Wow. How often can you say that number 17 in a series is the best by far? Definitely the case with this book.
I always enjoy Anna Pigeon novels, so much so that my husband knows to pick up any book on the library's new book shelf with her name on it and take it home. I adore the heroine, who is the best portrayal I've ever seen of an introvert. Since she's also a park ranger who likes the outdoors more than most people, I really identify with her. Here's what her husband says about Anna Pigeon on page 2 of Destroyer Angel: "A man might put Anna on a pedestal, but she would only leap down, snatch up a chain saw, and cut it up for firewood." Now there's a role model!
All of that said, some of the Anna Pigeon books get too graphic for me. Others don't have that one solid thread of emotional story that I crave. This book, though, is just the right combination of character-driven plot with scary stuff that isn't too scary. The dog character was perfect and the worst bad guy was both creepy and fascinating --- usually I skim the bad-guy parts in books like this because they're boring, but not in Destroyer Angel.
The writing is so superb that I paused for a moment now and then to relish it, but not in that in-your-face literary way that detracts from the story. There were a couple of words I didn't know (very unusual in modern books) and several references to classics, but it all worked rather than seeming pretentious. This is how fiction should be done.
By the way, if you haven't read the other books in the series, it won't really matter. This one completely works as a standalone. Just think, if you hadn't read this excessively long review, you could have read the first chapter by now!
I always enjoy Anna Pigeon novels, so much so that my husband knows to pick up any book on the library's new book shelf with her name on it and take it home. I adore the heroine, who is the best portrayal I've ever seen of an introvert. Since she's also a park ranger who likes the outdoors more than most people, I really identify with her. Here's what her husband says about Anna Pigeon on page 2 of Destroyer Angel: "A man might put Anna on a pedestal, but she would only leap down, snatch up a chain saw, and cut it up for firewood." Now there's a role model!
All of that said, some of the Anna Pigeon books get too graphic for me. Others don't have that one solid thread of emotional story that I crave. This book, though, is just the right combination of character-driven plot with scary stuff that isn't too scary. The dog character was perfect and the worst bad guy was both creepy and fascinating --- usually I skim the bad-guy parts in books like this because they're boring, but not in Destroyer Angel.
The writing is so superb that I paused for a moment now and then to relish it, but not in that in-your-face literary way that detracts from the story. There were a couple of words I didn't know (very unusual in modern books) and several references to classics, but it all worked rather than seeming pretentious. This is how fiction should be done.
By the way, if you haven't read the other books in the series, it won't really matter. This one completely works as a standalone. Just think, if you hadn't read this excessively long review, you could have read the first chapter by now!
May 13, 2014
This series has really changed over the years. As the books go on the main character (Anna Pigeon) has become less of a mystery solving park ranger and more if a reckless vigilante. I am not sure why the last few books have taken Anna out of her profession and the settings are always now based on vacations or retreats. I don't recall Anna being so sociopathic in the earlier books; I used to really empathize with her and like the character. Now each book gets stranger and stranger. In this one she completely goes rouge and become feral, losing her humanity in order to help save her friends. Parts of the story just seems really unrealistic (a billionaire engineer out in the woods without a satellite phone?). And the ending was bizarre; I did not see that coming because the author did not make any references to the bad guys motives at all. I'd love for Anna to get back to her mystery solving Park Ranger of yesteryear. We will see.
May 27, 2014
*Genre* Fiction, Mystery
*Rating* 3-3.5
*My thoughts*
Anna Pigeon, District Manager & Ranger for the U.S. Park Services, sets off on her first vacation since she married former Mississippi Sheriff Paul Davidson. This is supposed to be a relaxing canoe trip in the to the Iron Range in upstate Minnesota. With Anna is her friend Heath, a paraplegic; Heath’s fifteen-year-old daughter Elizabeth who has experienced hell through her own eyes; Leah, a wealthy designer of outdoor equipment whose marriage is a joke; and her thirteen year old daughter Katie.
Anna, who doesn't necessarily play well with others, returns from a brief sojourn to find that four angry looking men have come to kidnap the women, or worse. Anna, alone with just her wits and a dog named Wily by her side, must find a way to prevent the men from taking the women and teens away with them by using her years of ranger training. For those who have read this series before, I don't think you've ever seen this Anna before. She's goal orientated (get the women to safety), she doesn't care if she has to kill the kidnappers in order to do so, and she ends up once again putting herself through the ringer, while still finding a way to survive when all is said and done.
I have been reading this series from the very beginning thanks mostly to my local library. I love when Barr uses actual settings for her stories. It makes the series unique in that regards. I would definitely love to visit all the places that Anna has been to over the course of 17 novels. Minnesota offers a challenging environment for our heroine to become something she's not; a trained mercenary. Anna has to become a mercenary in order to save her friends from thugs, rapists, criminals, and someone with a much deeper agenda that doesn't come to the fore front until the climatic ending.
I did not rate this book any higher than it probably deserves, because once again I refuse to accept that there is ANY need for instances of rape. When you attempt to rape a young girl like Katie who is basically innocent over and over and over again, you end up losing rating points. I will continue to rally, and rave, and stand up to those authors that truly believe rape in any venue is a necessity. I didn't say that I would stop reading these novels, but I'll just be rating my experiences much lower than anyone else.
Published: April 1st 2014 by Minotaur Books
*Rating* 3-3.5
*My thoughts*
Anna Pigeon, District Manager & Ranger for the U.S. Park Services, sets off on her first vacation since she married former Mississippi Sheriff Paul Davidson. This is supposed to be a relaxing canoe trip in the to the Iron Range in upstate Minnesota. With Anna is her friend Heath, a paraplegic; Heath’s fifteen-year-old daughter Elizabeth who has experienced hell through her own eyes; Leah, a wealthy designer of outdoor equipment whose marriage is a joke; and her thirteen year old daughter Katie.
Anna, who doesn't necessarily play well with others, returns from a brief sojourn to find that four angry looking men have come to kidnap the women, or worse. Anna, alone with just her wits and a dog named Wily by her side, must find a way to prevent the men from taking the women and teens away with them by using her years of ranger training. For those who have read this series before, I don't think you've ever seen this Anna before. She's goal orientated (get the women to safety), she doesn't care if she has to kill the kidnappers in order to do so, and she ends up once again putting herself through the ringer, while still finding a way to survive when all is said and done.
I have been reading this series from the very beginning thanks mostly to my local library. I love when Barr uses actual settings for her stories. It makes the series unique in that regards. I would definitely love to visit all the places that Anna has been to over the course of 17 novels. Minnesota offers a challenging environment for our heroine to become something she's not; a trained mercenary. Anna has to become a mercenary in order to save her friends from thugs, rapists, criminals, and someone with a much deeper agenda that doesn't come to the fore front until the climatic ending.
I did not rate this book any higher than it probably deserves, because once again I refuse to accept that there is ANY need for instances of rape. When you attempt to rape a young girl like Katie who is basically innocent over and over and over again, you end up losing rating points. I will continue to rally, and rave, and stand up to those authors that truly believe rape in any venue is a necessity. I didn't say that I would stop reading these novels, but I'll just be rating my experiences much lower than anyone else.
Published: April 1st 2014 by Minotaur Books
August 10, 2016
Definitely one of my favorites of the Anna Pigeon series. I think what I enjoyed most was the bad guys. Not that I liked the bad guys. Because they were bad guys. Duh! I liked that they were given different roles and had different agendas. Same holds true for the five women (actually three women and two teens). Different enough from one another to add to the whole.
It's been a while since I've read this series, but I was particularly pleased with Anna in this one. She is a national parks ranger and typically gets involved with people breaking the rules of the park system. She moves around the country so often the park itself feels like a character. I didn't really get that feeling in this story. Rough outline: 4 men track the group down with plans to kidnap one of the mother/daughter couples. They end up kidnapping all four. Anna is kayaking and returns to camp to find the incident in progress. So Anna sets out to save her friends.
I was pleased with how the story played out. What does not please me after reading one of these books is that I'm always shocked by the level of criminal activity in the parks. Say it ain't so. In my very limited experience camping, I have always felt very safe, kind of like different rules should apply. A kinder, outdoorsy camaraderie which prohibits bad behavior. It is creepy to think of psychopaths roaming the woods, preying on hikers and campers. That's just poor etiquette! Nevada Barr did work for the National Park Service before writing this series so I guess she knows what she's talking about.
It's been a while since I've read this series, but I was particularly pleased with Anna in this one. She is a national parks ranger and typically gets involved with people breaking the rules of the park system. She moves around the country so often the park itself feels like a character. I didn't really get that feeling in this story. Rough outline: 4 men track the group down with plans to kidnap one of the mother/daughter couples. They end up kidnapping all four. Anna is kayaking and returns to camp to find the incident in progress. So Anna sets out to save her friends.
I was pleased with how the story played out. What does not please me after reading one of these books is that I'm always shocked by the level of criminal activity in the parks. Say it ain't so. In my very limited experience camping, I have always felt very safe, kind of like different rules should apply. A kinder, outdoorsy camaraderie which prohibits bad behavior. It is creepy to think of psychopaths roaming the woods, preying on hikers and campers. That's just poor etiquette! Nevada Barr did work for the National Park Service before writing this series so I guess she knows what she's talking about.
July 12, 2014
Recommended. I loved The Rope, the Anna Pigeon prequel, that was the last entry in this long-running series. This new one is a clear cut above even that. Three women friends and two teenaged daughters in the wilderness. One of the women a paraplegic. And an old dog. Once camp is set up, Anna leaves for a solitary paddle in one of their two canoes. And then, in come the bad guys. Four of them, tough, seasoned, creepy. Depraved. Sink the canoe. Kill the dog. This one is not a whodunit, but rather a "What's going to happen next?" It's exciting, suspenseful, with many twists and turns. But Nevada Barr is an old hand at this by now, and deftly shades the action and suspense with an excellent psychological study of the three friends and two daughters, giving the story a kind of richness not often achieved. There will be plenty of opportunities for held breath, exclamations of shock or surprise or...no, that would be telling...but the level of suspense keeps ratcheting upwards, and ever upwards. After all...heavily armed captors. Mature, unathletic women, one of whom can't stand on her own, on a forced march through dense forest. A spoiled young girl, self-centered, younger than her years. A slightly older girl, rescued from horrific violence in her past. Anna nowhere in sight. What can they possibly do but march forward and trust, or hope, they will survive. What can they possibly do? And how?
March 9, 2014
Her sisters' keeper (18th in the Anna Pigeon series)
I have read all of author Barr's Anna Pigeon series starting with "Track of the Cat" in 1993 and her stand-alone novel "13 1/2." Barr has been one of my favorite authors for years. But I do like her earlier books more than these last few of the series. I liked when Anna was out in different national parks. They just seemed more REAL to me in some ways.
This time around Anna is out with friends on a mini vacation in upstate Minnesota. She is canoeing and camping with old friends (see "Hard Truth") and some new acquaintances, trying out some camping test gear for the disabled. While Anna is taking a solitary canoe trip one night, their camp is invaded by four dangerous men, and it is up to Anna to rescue the hostages.
While many of the scenes are pretty unbelievable, this still makes for a scary thriller as Anna uses her outdoor knowledge and her common sense to outwit and fight for the survival of all in her group.
In-depth characterization as always, a love of the outdoors shining through, and even though the plotline is a bit bizarre, the read is still well worth delving into.
NOTE: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
I have read all of author Barr's Anna Pigeon series starting with "Track of the Cat" in 1993 and her stand-alone novel "13 1/2." Barr has been one of my favorite authors for years. But I do like her earlier books more than these last few of the series. I liked when Anna was out in different national parks. They just seemed more REAL to me in some ways.
This time around Anna is out with friends on a mini vacation in upstate Minnesota. She is canoeing and camping with old friends (see "Hard Truth") and some new acquaintances, trying out some camping test gear for the disabled. While Anna is taking a solitary canoe trip one night, their camp is invaded by four dangerous men, and it is up to Anna to rescue the hostages.
While many of the scenes are pretty unbelievable, this still makes for a scary thriller as Anna uses her outdoor knowledge and her common sense to outwit and fight for the survival of all in her group.
In-depth characterization as always, a love of the outdoors shining through, and even though the plotline is a bit bizarre, the read is still well worth delving into.
NOTE: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
April 16, 2014
I've been looking forward to the Destroyer Angel release for months, intrigued by the location and reappearance of Heath Jarrod. While the story had its moments, overall it was just OK. The opening seemed to mimic a scene from Meryl Streep's The River Wild. Anna has gone on a canoe trip with Heath, Heath's adopted daughter and another woman with her daughter. While Anna is out on the river for some quiet alone time, armed men enter the camp and take her friends hostage, with the intent of marching them to a helicopter pick up point. The remainder of the story focuses on Anna's silent pursuit of the captives in order to free them. In this book, Anna goes immediately from observer to animal predator, waiting for a mistake she can capitalize on to reduce the attacker's numbers. That sudden transition almost seems clunky here compared to previous books where she senses the wrongness of a situation and the tension builds throughout the story. Part of it is the focus of this story, but part of it comes from the way the story is told.
When I finished this book, I was dissatisfied, feeling it could have been a much better read given a few more rounds with a good editor. Justice prevails via the Destroyer Angel of the title, held in reserve until the 11th hour.
When I finished this book, I was dissatisfied, feeling it could have been a much better read given a few more rounds with a good editor. Justice prevails via the Destroyer Angel of the title, held in reserve until the 11th hour.
August 16, 2014
When Anna discovers that four ruthless kidnappers have taken her friends - two teenaged girls and two women, one of whom is paraplegic - hostage while camping, it doesn't look good. She has no supplies, no weapons, and no way to communicate with them, and at any minute they might decide that her disabled friend or the girls are too much trouble.
At times Anna's link to sanity seems to sometimes stretch to the very point of breaking, but any reader of the series knows how tenacious she is, so the only questions are, "When?" and "How?" Either seem impossible, but the alternative - running for help - is equally unlikely. Barr's characters remain believable, sometimes scared, or angry, or jealous, or sullen, or brave, or stubborn, and her ability to step back and see the absurdity in a situation is wonderful. I'd forgotten how much I missed Anna Pigeon!
At times Anna's link to sanity seems to sometimes stretch to the very point of breaking, but any reader of the series knows how tenacious she is, so the only questions are, "When?" and "How?" Either seem impossible, but the alternative - running for help - is equally unlikely. Barr's characters remain believable, sometimes scared, or angry, or jealous, or sullen, or brave, or stubborn, and her ability to step back and see the absurdity in a situation is wonderful. I'd forgotten how much I missed Anna Pigeon!
July 28, 2016
I really did not like this book. I have read a number of Nevada Barr's novels and enjoyed them. As a former Park Ranger, Barr's books usually take place in one of the National Parks. I have enjoyed learning about the parks and the plot lines are engaging. This book has no such plot. The book takes place on a camping trip in Minnesota, where Anna Pigeon (the Park Ranger and protagonist in Barr's books) and a group of women and young girls (Heath, a paraplegic; Heath's 15 year old daughter, Elizabeth; Leah, a wealthy inventor; and Katie, her 13 year-old daughter) are kidnapped. The whole plot could be summarized in this question: Are they going to be raped or not? The title of the book originates from one of the most toxic mushrooms in the world, which is introduced in the book's conclusion. Other than that interesting tidbit, the book is not worth reading, as it's monotonous.
May 11, 2017
I have once again come to the end of an adventure with Anna Pigeon. I have journeyed with Anna through many of the National Parks of the U.S. and other wild country. We have been lost in the dark, deep in the bowels under Carlsbad Caverns, high in the Rocky Mountains, studied wolves in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, saved Loggerhead turtles on Cumberland Island, roamed the ruins at Mesa Verde—and so many others! I love each of these novels, and like the others, in this one Nevada Barr marries the rich descriptiveness of the landscape and natural setting with a story of suspense, incredible situations, and cunning characters. Ms. Barr has such a talent for stories that are gripping, creating situations that thwart Anna time after time, and yet she keeps on going, and winning! I love this series.
May 6, 2016
My wife and I both have been reading Nevada Barr's mysteries for 20 years. I enjoyed this book and give it 4 stars out of 5. It is a thriller more than a mystery, because the bad guys are identified at the beginning when they kidnap 2 women and their 2 daughters for ransom. The 4 plus Anna Pigeon, are a raft trip in a US National Forest in Northern Minnesota. Unfortunately for the kidnappers, Anna is on a solitary canoe trip when the kidnapping takes place. The suspense builds as she works to stop them, even though she is unarmed and they have guns. But Anna is an experienced US Park ranger and they are city guys. This was an Amazon purchase.
May 22, 2014
I lost many hours of sleep reading this book. I usually read a page or two of a book at night before falling asleep. This book is so "edge of your seat" I couldn't stop reading and, instead of falling asleep, I spent too many hours trying to read what was next. This book was like a jolt of caffeine! Very well constructed mystery/kidnapping story as Anna is forced into a "wild woman/wolf" role while trailing and trying to save her friends. Why were her friends kidnapped by these unspeakably evil thugs? How will Anna save them? Read the book, but try to get enough sleep :-D
May 11, 2014
Anna Pigeon kicks butt. This is a good one for suspense.
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