Ernie's Reviews > Hard Truth

Actually, this was read as an audio book. It was pleasant to have the words interpreted as well. I listened to it while on an 18 hour car ride.

Nevada Barr writes a mystery series based on a park ranger named Anna Pigeon and based at different national parks. This is only the second for me. The first was based on the park in the Florida Keys. This one based in the Rocky Mountain National Park. Having visited RMNP several times, I thought it would be fun.

Anna is newly assigned as one of the head rangers at the park. Along with the seasonal rangers and the locals, one of the main characters in this story is a woman who was paralyzed while rock climbing, and still coming to grips with it. --- The mystery begins when two young girls come out of the woods to the paralyzed woman. They were two of three girls missing for about 6 weeks. They were all residents of a strange religious community described as a breakoff from Mormonism. ...that to explain one of the occurence of polygamy. ---- The questions are.... where is the other girl? Where have these two been? (they claim amnesia. The mystery unfolds with a complex set of suspects, lots of clues and... frankly.... a horrific ending. It reminds me of some other mysteries which are quite brutal at the end when the hero confronts true evil. Frankly... again frankly.... I don't really like brutal endings. While, of course evil is defeated... there are residual effects that are only acceptable because this is fiction. Bleah.

The writing is good. She is an excellent story teller and the detail is wonderful, especially with such beautiful settings. Occasionally there is a sentence or phrase that is either very poetic and memorable... or too much of a cliche. It departs from the conventional story telling. It doesn't detract but does remind me that this is a creative work. I enjoyed the story and the mystery was well done. I did not appreciate the brutality. It was essential to the story but ....