Firestorm (Anna Pigeon Mysteries)

An insatiable, unstoppable beast, the wildfire called Jackknife has already devoured 17,000 acres of California's Lassen Volcanic National Park. A devastating force of nature, it has brought out the very best -- and worst -- in those sworn to defeat it.

Ranger Anna Pigeon is among the exhausted firefighters, serving as medic and spike camp security, when an abrupt weather shift sends Jackknife racing relentlessly in their direction. And when the monstrous blaze has passed, Anna emerges from her protective shelter to discover two men are dead: one a victim of the hungry flames, the other stabbed through the heart. Now, trapped in a nightmarish landscape of snow and ash, cut off from rescue by a rampaging winter storm, Anna must investigate an inexplicable homicide -- as she and nine others struggle to survive the terrible rage if nature. . . and the murderer in their midst.

Amazon.com
A raging fire in a national park seems an unlikely setting for a murder, but that's exactly the circumstances that crime-fighting park ranger and medic Anna Pigeon confronts in this mystery thriller. A suspicious fire breaks loose in Northern California's Lassen Volcanic Park and Pigeon assists in battling the blaze and treating the wounds of other fire fighters. As if that's not enough, Pigeon finds herself without food and water trapped with a group of fire fighters, one of whom is a murderer. She tries to figure out who the culprit is before he, or the weather, strikes again.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Anna Pigeon wins again!, 2008-05-27
What can I say -- Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon series is the best. This book is so descriptive as the firestorm races over Anna as she is huddled in her "Shake and Bake" tent. I could feel the heat! And then there are the cold nights in a burned forest. I was freezing!! Thanks to Nevada Barr for another great book.


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Anna Fights Five, 2008-04-19
FIRESTORM is my favorite Anna Pigeon. I've never been in the western US, but live near Daniel Boone National Forest where the threat of fire is always present.
Nevada Barr's description of Anna survival under a pop-tent is so vivid the sweat will be running down your neck just reading about it. This is one scary book, because the tension never lags, fire roars past and now Anna and her companions must survive a winter storm in the midst of ashes. If a killer will allow them.
A good fast read that should be ranked as a classic.
Nash Black, author of WRITING AS A SMALL BUSINESS and SINS OF THE FATHERS.


4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Uncompelling lifeboat-type story, 2007-11-18
The breathless positive reviewers of this book puzzle me. Their experience was distinctly not my experience. I've read 3 of Barr's books now and this was definitely *not* the pick of the litter. At Barr's best, she's a 4. This one was somewhere between a 2 and 3...but since I can't award half stars, I'll give it a 2. This was definitely the worst of the three books by Barr I've read thus far.

Here's the plot in a nutshell.

A group of rangers including our heroine, Anna Pigeon, are brought together from various national parks and agencies to fight a fire in Lassen National Park in Northern California. When the fire unexpectedly flares, a group of 9 are caught off guard and with no path of retreat from the rapidly advancing flames. Their only hope for survival is to crawl inside their fire-proof emergency tents, burrow into the ground, and hope that the fire will literally flash over the top of them so quickly that they won't be baked to death...merely scorched.

When the inferno blasts over, it feels like hours but is just minutes. They are singed, some quite seriously, but alive. However, although 9 people crawled into tents, only 8 people emerge: one literally has a knife in his back. And, the fire has felled trees across the only road in to the area, nor will the weather allow rescue helicopters to reach them. The 8 survivors are trapped indefinitely without food as it begins to snow and temperatures begin to drop -- and one of them is a killer.

Sounds enticing enough. But the ensuing days as the 8 struggle to survive are gray, cold, eventless, and populated with miserable people struggling to maintain their sanity and civility.

Basically, that describes how I felt trying to perservere through the remainder of the book. Yeah, I made it. But it wasn't a pleasant experience.

Barr decides to make the victim in this book a man who is universally scrorned by all who know him. And in so doing, we don't care that he's dead, we don't care why he died, and we don't care who killed him. There is just no incentive for the reader here to really care about finding the killer. In fact, I just couldn't bring myself to care about *any* of the characters or details in this story, doubly sad since I live in that part of the country and many of the towns and landmarks Barr describes are my stomping grounds that would normally have been very interesting to me. Oh, and Barr -- for reasons known only to herself -- felt obliged to once again introduce a homosexual lover subplot into the story. Why she feels compelled to insert this into every story is beyond me. I think it must be some type of politically correct statement. Whatever. But I'm beginning to find it tiresome. It feels contrived and forced because it is...contrived and forced.

Anna Pigeon is a likeable enough protagonist who behaves and talks like a real person. I have no gripe with Barr's writing abilities or dialog. But the people in this story get confusing. It is hard to keep the 8 folks in this "lifeboat" type story straight. It is harder still to care about them or care about finding a resolution.

It just felt like 4 long days in the snow surrounded by blackened timbers and a bunch of people you don't like.


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Great read., 2007-08-22
This book is very well written and does a great job of keeping your interest to the very end. Although not my favorite of Ms. Barr's it certainly does not disappoint when it comes to following how Anna Pigeon works to figure out who dunnit. Ms. Barr's ability to describe scenery and her knowledge of enviro-type topics help to make the Anna Pigeon series of mysteries quite enjoyable to read. Her ability to describe the scenery and the plant and animal life present in each scenario helps to bring a sense of reality to what you are reading and makes you feel more like you are there.


6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

Another worthy effort from Barr, 2007-07-18
Barr has a real handle for characters and Anna is eminently likable in a very human way. She does things that strike the reader as stupid and potentially self-destructive and, in that way, it is easy to relate to her. Barr does a nice job of giving us bits and pieces of Anna without giving too much away, so that we're always learning something new about her with each book.

The central mystery of this book does a nice job of bringing together seemingly disparate elements - the strange occurrences firmly rooted in the real world and those seemingly rooted in the spiritual world. There are some nice details here about the superstitions and culture of the Anasazi and Barr does a nice job of providing some detail without sounding like a preachy history teacher. The twist is very interesting and the ending suspenseful and Barr gives us a welcome character in Frederick.

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