|
|
DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 3, No. 21 |
 Ron Miller reviews the new Anna Pigeon mystery |
 |
Hunting Season |
Anna Pigeon's tenth case
laced with scary moments
of TheColumnists.com
Doyce Burnett might be the last person in Mississippi that anyone would ever expect to be caught up in a sex scandal involving bondage. He was known to be a pretty straight-minded redneck "good ol' boy" to his buddies and he was so fat you'd think his sex partner would have to buy up half the rope in the county to ever get him properly trussed up for action.
But you can't just ask him to explain, either, because Doyce turns up stone cold dead and buck naked except for his underpants, bearing the unmistakable signs that he'd recently been strung up by the wrists and left hanging until he suffocated in his own gross fatness.
That's one of the major mysteries facing Park Ranger Anna Pigeon in "Hunting Season" (Putnam, $24.95), the 10th and latest Anna Pigeon mystery from best-selling author Nevada Barr.
Anna is drawn into the affairs of Doyce Burnett because his corpse was hauled from somewhere else and quietly left on the bed in a room not open to public view in a historical building within the Mt. Locust tourist attraction along the Natchez Trace Parkway. How the killers got the body there is puzzling enough, but why they went to the trouble is even more perplexing.
At first, the assumption is that Doyce was taking part in some sort of sex games in which hanging yourself up by ropes or straps supposedly heightens the sexual pleasure. Then the medical examiner reveals there's no sign Doyce had done anything remotely sexual before his death. However, there are indications he had recently fired a gun.
For Anna, a widow still trying to adjust to living in the deep south, the investigation is a difficult one. For one thing, Doyce was the brother of undertaker Raymond Barnette, who's currently running for sheriff and doesn't want any suggestion of a sex scandal involving his family to be made public.
Anna also has a raft of other pesky problems, including her discovery of an illegal hunting stand being used by poachers on park land and an epidemic of vandalism at a nearby cemetery where a project is underway to identify the remains of former slaves and give them decent burials.
As if those weren't enough plagues, Anna also has to contend with the surly behavior of Randy Thigpen (rhymes with "pigpen"), a giant slob who's her deputy ranger and resents her because she took the job he thought was his by right of seniority.
Author Barr, who used to be a ranger herself in the same territory, is a specialist in local color, so much of the enjoyment of reading "Hunting Season" comes from the stylish and humorous way she describes what it must be like to be a female ranger in the previously all-male dominion of southern-style hunting and fishing.
But there are several places where "Hunting Season" turns into a fast-paced thriller that will move you to the edge of your reading chair. One comes when Anna tracks down a gang of game poachers and prepares to arrest them--only to realize she's walked into a trap and is being stalked through the woods by armed men whose plan is to rape her before killing her.
Another edge-of-seat section comes when Anna realizes her patrol car is being followed down a lonely highway by a pickup truck equipped with what amounts to a battering ram where there should be a front grill.
Anna Pigeon has lots of friends and allies, but the trouble with working alone in such remote places is that they're always way too far away to do her any good. And, with a backup man like Randy Thigpen, she often feels she'd be better off facing trouble alone.
"Hunting Season"
makes no great pretensions about being literature, but it's a
brisk and entertaining mystery thriller that will hold you until
the very last page.
© 2002 by Ron Miller.
The Ron Miller caricature is © 2001 by Jim Hummel. The illustration
is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd.
E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
Ron
Miller is the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the
official companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series.
He currently teaches "The Curious History of Mystery"
at Whatcom Community College in Bellingham, Washington.
|
You can get reprint rights for as low as $25. To learn more, click here: REPRINTS |
| Home | About Us | Archives | Talkback | Shopping Mall |