Reviews

Blood Lure, by Nevada Barr

meliaraastair's review against another edition

4.0

First, a little forewarning that I read over half of these with a fever, so no guarantee that I'm getting any of this right...but for some reason this was about all I could get myself to do yesterday while sick.  In the few hours I was awake.  Illness is dumb!  So I'll keep this short...

Anna is off on a training mission in Glacier National Park studying bear DNA.  While in the backcountry, a bear comes around their tent and one of their team members is missing.  After a long hunt, a body is found, and then kid team member turns up.  The body turns out to be the kid's stepmother.  

I was hoping for more details about how gorgeous the scenery was, because Glacier is the most beautiful place I've ever seen. I was glad, though, that while bears were a predominant part of the story, they weren't ever the bad guy.  I'm terrified of bears, but from what I know, bears will be bears, and as long as we remember that we are hanging out in their living rooms and to take the appropriate precautions, we can stay safe and still enjoy their homes. 

As I said...fever reading, but I did enjoy this book.  I'll go 7 of 10 for enjoyment and 4 of 5 for readability.  

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allyexa's review

adventurous dark informative mysterious sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No

3.0

I finished this book feeling like I had just awoken from a fever dream.

What a strange installment of this series. Anna is very much on her own here- not even a phone call to Molly. And that’s fine, we basically get a new cast of characters every book, but Anna felt a bit more disconnected here than usual.

The first 3/4 of the book was full of mostly awful humans who took up too much air (even after death), and Anna walks around confused and disturbed and threatened. It didn’t feel great.

Then the last 1/4 of the book was like a story I would have made up as a child. I began to care about the characters, and the first part of the book was redeemed a bit. Still would have loved more than 1-3 pages of resolution.

jmcdbrock's review against another edition

4.0

Again, as with my other fave mystery author, I'll spare you the list of the whole series. If you want to read her, start with the first book in the series - "Track of the Cat." The author is a former park ranger. The sleuth in her mysteries, Anna Pigeon, is also a female park ranger. She's very independent and a bit sarcastic - fun to read - lots of internal dialogue. Each novel takes place in a different national park, and the descriptions of them are thorough and enjoyable (scenery, flora, fauna, weather patterns, etc.) I liked the first several books in the series. The quality of last few has been slightly off...but, still, four stars ain't bad.

nocto's review against another edition

Anna Pigeon is currently one of my favourite characters in literature and it feels like she's been through a lot since I first met her on the Track of the Cat in Texas nine books ago. In this book she's mostly lucid and sane and it's really comforting to see her coping with the world and not putting herself into too much danger.

Though I love the character, the setting is what really makes these books and this time we are in the Glacier National Park which spans the Montana/British Columbia border. Anna is helping out on a project to collect DNA samples from grizzly bears in the park. Until, with reasonable predictability, her camp gets ravaged by a bear, people go missing, people get killed etc. and she has to get into investigator mode.

My one criticism of this book would be that it's slow to get off the ground. Nothing much unusual happens for the first fifty pages or so and if I wasn't so hooked on the series and so sure that something interesting was just waiting on the sidelines to happen then I might have put it down and not got back to it for a while.

Another couple of more or less random comments: there's a plot twist here that an author wouldn't get away with in a first book and Anna, much as I love her, might seem a bit insipid if you first meet her in this book without knowing about her past. Both of these things mean that I wouldn't recommend jumping into this series at this point without sampling some of the earlier books.

When it got going though the plot had pretty much everything that I could have wanted. There's a nice balance between Anna in the park and Anna in the office, the wildlife and the murder, Anna alone and Anna with friends. My favourite episode in the series remains the remarkable Firestorm but I thought this was one of the better books in the series from plot, setting and character viewpoints.

ajlewis2's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious fast-paced

5.0

Great story with descriptions of the park and dwellers within. I love the dialogue and humor Barr puts in along with lots of interesting characters.  The narrator makes this book so good! 

innae's review against another edition

3.0

This is the first Anna Pigeon story I have read..it was a recommendation from a friend. I liked the story. The mystery had enough twists to keep me interested, even if I figured out some of it before the end (that means the author left enough clues). I didn't feel lost even though this is the 9th book in the series. I would rec it to anyone who is a fan of mysteries, and enjoys the back drop of the National Parks.

catherine_t's review

adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

National Park Service ranger Anna Pigeon is in Glacier National Park to learn about using DNA to monitor wildlife from Joan Rand, bear researcher. Along with Joan's assistant, Rory Van Slyke, they go out to set traps to gather hair and feces for sampling. Out in the backcountry, their camp is ravaged by a bear in the night. Anna and Joan emerge from their mangled tent in the morning to discover that Rory is missing. They call for help from fellow rangers to search for Rory, not knowing if the boy is alive or dead. The searchers first turn up a corpse, but it's not Rory: it's a woman, whose face has been mutilated. 

The corpse is identified as Carolyn Van Slyke--Rory's stepmother. The pool of suspects is small, yet Anna cannot make any headway with the case. How does a small-time conman fit in? Did Rory, in a fugue state, kill her? Was it his father, Les? And there's still the rampaging bear out there...

This was my first Anna Pigeon novel, and I'll likely read more. I usually like to start with the first book in a series, but this one came in a bunch of books that arrived via my aunt, and I never turn my nose up at a free book, especially if it's by a writer I've heard good things about.

happy_hiker's review against another edition

2.0

This book started out OK for me, then I got bored by some of the description of the park. I also didn’t care for Anna (as I recall from long ago reading another book in this series) or Joan – even though I like people depicted with their faults, they were both a little curmudgeony for me and not very likeable. It took me forever to read this book, and I admit to some skimming towards the end because I just wanted to get done. I gave it two stars instead of one - I've read much worse. I haven't read any more book in this series since this one.

happlepider's review against another edition

adventurous informative mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

I didn't find this one quite as engrossing as the one I had read previously (a superior death) and wasn't drawn into the landscape as much, although a problem that anna has on and off through the book is feeling disconnected from her natural surroundings. I also read them out of sequence because I'd wanted to read about what I thought would be a similar environment. I did none the less enjoy all the information about bears!

basil_plant's review against another edition

adventurous informative mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

possibly the best anna pigeon book i’ve read! the resolution of the mystery was a bit cloudy to me as i felt like i missed some key details but otherwise a great read!