The Rope

November 21, 2011
Set in 1995, bestseller Barr’s exciting 17th Anna Pigeon thriller (after 2010’s Burn) takes readers where they’ve wanted to go for years—to Anna’s beginnings as a park ranger. Having left her life as a stage manager in New York City, 35-year-old Anna takes on a seasonal job in a canyon wilderness park on the shores of Lake Powell in Arizona. Ten days later, co-worker Jenny Gorman and others are idly wondering why she walked off the job without saying good-bye. The answer is that Anna lies naked, dazed, and injured at the bottom of a dry well. All Anna remembers at first is that she went for a hike in the desert, and now she’s at the mercy of an unknown assailant. When Jenny learns that Anna may not have left voluntarily, she begins to search. Meanwhile, Anna escapes after her attacker returns to the well—or was that really her attacker? Misdirection and a rising body count ratchet up the tension. 150,000 first printing; author tour. Agent: Dominick Abel.

Starred review from December 1, 2011

The adventures of park ranger Anna Pigeon have filled the pages of 16 books, and now her legion of loyal fans can find out how her story began. After her husband's death in 1995, Anna leaves New York City to take a seasonal position at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. On a hike to explore the dry canyon lands around Lake Powell, Anna literally falls into a mystery. Fighting thirst and drug-induced delirium, she extricates herself from the dry well and begins to unravel the who and why of her tortuous ordeal. Barr's luxuriant depictions of desert landscapes with its colors and hues and details about Lake Powell's tourist population are interwoven into the narrative as an indispensable element of her popular series. Anna emerges from this canyon escapade as a strong, determined woman who plans to return to park service employment as a law enforcement ranger, stating that "more women should carry guns." VERDICT Another awesome winner for Barr. [See Prepub Alert, 8/1/11.]--Patricia Ann Owens, Illinois Eastern Community Coll., Mount Carmel

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2011
Prequel to Barr's popular Anna Pigeon series. For readers who have always wondered what made Anna Pigeon forsake a Manhattan theatre career for the life of a ranger/sleuth in the country's most godforsaken locales, some answers: Anna, traumatized by the sudden departure of her husband, Zach, shuts her eyes and picks a job, any job, as long as it's different from her old life. And what could be more alien than a summer as a seasonal assistant in the National Park Service, where she is immediately assigned to help ranger Jenny, aka the Fecal Queen, remove human waste deposited by tourists on the shores of the otherwise pristine Lake Powell, Utah. This dam-created lake nestled in deep canyons is a favorite destination for houseboaters, including bands of partying overprivileged 20-somethings. Unused to desert conditions, Anna embarks on an ill-advised solo hike, where she surprises three college-age boys raping a young woman. The next thing Anna knows, she awakens in a sinkhole, naked, with a bruised skull and a dislocated arm. Intermittently conscious, with nothing to drink but the apparently drugged contents of a canteen, Anna discovers the corpse of the rape victim (whose name bracelet identifies her as Kay) buried nearby. Anna eventually vows to get in even better shape to handle the rough terrain--and characters--of her new world. Along the way, the obvious culprits turn out not to be so obvious, and Barr succeeds in keeping us guessing as to who the real psychopaths are. Cliffhangers, literal and literary, abound.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

June 1, 2012

Summer in the National Park Service would seem like a great opportunity to mend a wounded spirit, but when a young Anna Pigeon signs up for seasonal work at a park on the shores of Utah's Lake Powell she finds herself in serious trouble. The story opens with Anna trapped in an isolated canyon, wounded, drugged, and unsure of who put her there. Anna's attempt to escape and find out who wants her dead makes for a tension-filled tale. VERDICT This prequel to Barr's long-running series (Burn; Borderline) gives fans a terrific new look at a beloved crime fiction character.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2011
Sooner or later, every hero gets an origin story. Anna Pigeon, the park ranger who's starred in a series of popular novels, gets hers now. It's 1995. Anna, a new hire at the Dangling Rope Park, has disappeared. Her coworkers (most of whom consider her to be a little odd anyway) figure she's just wandered off somewhere, maybe gone back to New York. But, as we learn in terrifying detail, she's been taken by an unknown assailant and tossed naked into the bottom of a hole. The hole, as it turns out, has had previous occupants, one of whom, relatively recently deceased, Anna digs upthis is sure to turn some stomachsand then takes her clothes. Eventually, she escapes from captivity by bashing her captor on the head; but, returning to the hole with law-enforcement officers, Anna discovers she's bashed not her captor but one of her colleagues, who had been trying to rescue her, or so he says. Dark and visceral, the novel is sure to appeal to Barr's legion of fans, especially those who have been clamoring for the author to light the shadows of Anna's past. Here we see a familiar character in a sort of rough-draft form, the way Lee Child's novels about Jack Reacher's early days show us a still-forming, rough-around-the-edges version of the familiar hero. A crisply written and revelatory entry in the Pigeon series. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The 150,000 first printing will at least make a start toward getting Barr's latest into the hands of her adoring audience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)