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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780425190838
ISBN number: 0425190838
Label: Berkley
Manufacturer: Berkley
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 272
Printing Date: June 03, 2003
Publishing house: Berkley
Release Date: June 03, 2003
Sale Popularity Level: 24067
Studio: Berkley
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Product Description:
Anna Pigeon takes a job as a park ranger looking for peace in the wilderness-but finds murder instead.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
Track of the Cat, by Nevada Barr, is the very first book in a series featuring Anna Pigeon, a law enforcement officer for the National Park Service. Since Barr has been a park ranger in the past (present?), including Guadalupe Mountains National Park, the location for this novel, she writes with the authority of place knowledge.
In Track of the Cat, Anna Pigeon finds a dead colleague. The medical examiner calls it a case of death by mountain lion predation. Pigeon thinks otherwise, and thus a mystery begins.
This book was written in 1993, soon after the well-publicized death of a high school jogger near Boulder, CO. In Scott Lancaster's tragic case, there was no mystery as to cause of death. As author David Baron investigated in The Beast in the Garden, the mystery was why we live in lion habitat and expect no consequences.
Back to Anna Pigeon. The lion tracks don't seem right, the claw marks seem to have occurred postmortem, and... the lion didn't feast.
Then she is almost killed. Finally, another park employee is killed in a very Indiana Jones appropriate way ("Snakes... why did it have to be snakes?").
Pigeon is one tough cookie. She has her problems, however, particularly with alcohol.
Nevada Barr hints at her own political and ethical philosophies:
"Any excuse to drag out the hunting rifles was a good excuse in Texas. Texans were the best hunters in the world. They were born to it, believed in it, almost like a religion. Hunting and football, not opposable thumbs and the ability to laugh, were what separated man from the apes" (p. 37).
"'I used to hunt,' Harland answered and Anna could tell he was uncomfortable with the subject. 'I bought that line about it being a 'challenge.' When I found out that a bull elk had an intelligence level equivalent to that of an eighteen-month-old toddler, I kind of lost my taste for it'" (p. 42).
But she tries to educate as well:
"'There've been no incidents of lions attacking humans in West Texas for the past one hundred years. Not one. Zilch. Nada'" (p. 32).
I've read that these novels get better over time. I look forward to the subsequent Anna Pigeon adventure.
Rated by buyers 
-
Another great Nevada Barr mystery . . . this one not as dark as say, Hard Truth (Anna Pigeon Mysteries), but nonetheless, still full of adventure, action, mystery, emotion, and a behind-the-scenes look at one of our National Parks--this one in Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas close to El Paso and the Mexican border.
Perhaps Track of the Cat is not as dark as, for example, A Superior Death (Anna Pigeon Mysteries) (which gave me the creeps), because Track of the Cat is Barr's very first mystery.
In the book, Park Ranger Anna Pigeon is her usual comic-book strong and fearless. Alone, she spends the night the treacherous Southwest desert without the safety of a zippered tent after describing that tarantulas and rattlesnakes hunt in the night. In this very first book, Anna is kinder, sweeter, and finds most of the people she works with above reproach after some research.
In later books, you don't find out until the end of the book that all but one of the characters in the book were blue herrings. And, they all seem like likely suspects. In Track of the Cat it's like she wasn't quite yet ready to explore the darkest depths of the human psyche.
I especially like Track of the Cat because it brings me back to a night I spent in the Southwest Desert of Arizona's Kitt Peak photographing a radio telescope, under construction, against the panoply of the stars. The construction workers had warned me to be careful of a rattlesnake that patrolled the area as part of its territory, bats that flew over the trash barrel, and a mother puma with cubs. Instead of being afraid of these natural predators, I got myself worked up about Bigfoot stalking in the bushes. It's the kind of thing that can come over you when you're all by yourself with only a camera and tripod for company and a full moon illuminating quivering shadows made by a nervous breeze that rustles the creosote bushes. Anna Pigeon is one stalwart gal!
The mountains lions in Track of the Cat have my deep affection and also Ms Barr's. A lovely book. I love the ending. Again, she's not quite yet ready to tell it like it is. But, this is the very first whisper of where she'll be going with later books.
Rated by buyers -
TRACK OF THE CAT by Nevada Barr introduces the reader to an outstanding series and a fascinating protagonist, Anna Pigeon.
The series manages a delicate balance between personal history and the working elements of a mystery. As the story progresses the reader also learns about the awesome landscape of the Texas hill county and the dangerous occupation of a national park ranger.
Each carefully chosen word will hold your eye to the page and bring you back for more.
Nash Black, author of WRITING AS A SMALL BUSINESS and SINS OF THE FATHERS.
Rated by buyers -
First in the Anna Pigeon Series. Years ago I was told that this was a great series, but I just didn't believe the person who told me. Guess I should have. Anna is a National Park Ranger and when two of her fellow rangers have mysterious deaths Anna investigates, almost gets herself killed. Anna will question many things in her life, but she makes for a great character.
Rated by buyers -
When the National Park Service puts a bounty on a killer mountain lion, it rubs National Park Ranger Anna Pigeon's fur the wrong way. It's a knee jerk reaction from the Park's leadership: Mountain Lion Attack! Kill the animal first, ask questions later. Or maybe no questions need to be asked at all. Something stinks at the Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and it's not just the brutal death of a fellow park ranger whose half eaten dead body was found by Anna in the back country. It's the naturalist vs. the politicians. The Park Service, neighboring cattle ranchers and developers all want the mountain lion disposed of. It seems Anna, suspicious of things that are a little too neat, is the only one taking the animal's side.
This is Nevada Barr's kick off novel, and a good one it is. Anna Pigeon, park ranger, is the hero. Unlike most, Anna is a law enforcement ranger. She didn't think there would be much law enforcement to do in this remote park in West Texas. Most enforcement types are stationed in parks close to urban areas where most crime takes place. Anna chose the law enforcement route because the Protective Division does not only the serious cop stuff, but Search and Rescue, where the real action is. When a mountain lion kills a human, it is not a crime, but when the humans make it look like it was done by an animal, yes, no matter if it is in the bedroom or on a city street or the back country, that is murder.
Because of the excellence of the writing, the natural world as a backdrop, and the character of Anna Pigeon, I've read several of Barr's books and have enjoyed them all.
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