I have heard of Nevada Barr, or at least I have seen her name in several libraries and book stores through the years yet I have never read anything. Trying to come up with a few new/different options I grabbed this along with a few others but this quickly rose to the top of my list after a brief check out. This was very good and although it is something teen in this series, something that would normally prevent me from reading this, it is also a sort of prequel to the remainder of her series. This was very good, and I excpect that I will be reading more Nevada Barr/Anna Pigeon before the year is out.

Anna Pigeon made for a nice protaginist, and a strong memorable female lead. The action and pacing of this book was very well done. I liked the fact of being a park ranger seprated it from falling into the routine of traditional crime thrillers and allowed this go in a variety of different directions. Anna did manage to find herself in several near death situations which should have sent red flags up for her not to fall into trouble again, or at the very least should have tipped the authorities that something was afoot. Barr did a very nice job of creating tension and several climactic scenes, as well as presenting a few different potential villians. The would be villians would be described in a manner which made them seem to be guilty, when she would yank it away and then throw another scenerio with another potential villian quite a few times. I do think she went to far and misled us to buy into certain villians by having them say or do something that points to thier guilt and then magically forgets it...perhaps that is the only thing that kept me from going 5 stars. this was a very enjoyable read!