Book Review: Burn by Nevada Barr

Burn by Nevada Barr
St Martin's Press
378 Pages
Copyright 2010

From the book:

Anna Pigeon, a Ranger with the National Park Service, is on administrative leave from her job as she recovers from the traumas of the past couple of months - while the physical wounds have healed, the emotional ones are still healing. With her new husband busy and back at work, Anna decides to go to stay with an old friend from the Park Service, Geneva, who works as a singer at the New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park.

Anna isn't in town long before she crosses paths with a tenant of Geneva's, a creepy guy named Jordan. She discovers what seems to be an attempt to place a curse on her - a gruesomely killed pigeon marked with runic symbols - and begins slowly to find traces of very dark doings in the hart of post-Katrina New Orleans. Tied up in all of this evil magic are Jordan, a fugitive mother accused of killing her husband and daughters in a fire; and faint whispers of unpleasant goings-on in the heart of the slowly recovering city.

Now it will take all of Anna's skills learned in the untamed outdoors to navigate the urban jungle in which she finds herself to uncover the threads that connect these seemingly disparate people, and to rescue the most vulnerable of creatures from the most savage of animals.

Let me start off by saying this book took me months to read. I'd pick it up, read a few pages, maybe a chapter or two, and then I'd set it down and basically, forget about it.

That, for me, is not normal when reading a Nevada Barr book. Her tales are ones that I normal devour in a couple of days or less.

Since I finished it, I've been trying to figure out why I didn't connect with this one.

The setting? No. I love New Orleans. I've only been there once and would love to go back and I know the aura of the city and was looking forward to its atmosphere playing a big part in the story. Unfortunately, it didn't.

The mention of magic? Hardly. I love stories that involve magic and the paranormal. What little bit of magic there was in this story was disappointing.

The villains? Barr normally crafts her villains so vividly that I find them hard to read. They normally make me cringe and by the end of the book, I am looking forward to them getting their just desserts. The villains in this one remained almost undefined or, maybe, unidentified. Making a large group of faceless people the 'villain' of the piece fell flat.

The nature of the 'savagery'? It is horrible, make no mistake about it, but it's almost become trite. I hate saying that but I don't know how else to put it.

Here's the bottom line, I think.

Barr normally weaves intricate stories that make their location - a national park - a vivid, important part of the story. She makes places come alive, creating a desire to see the actual place - Isle Royal, Ellis Island, Yosemite, the Dry Tortugas, even the inhospitable area around Big Bend - I've never finished a Nevada Barr book with feeling the need to visit the park she featured.

Except for this one. In Burn, the park was mentioned once. The setting could've been anywhere and that left me disappointed.

Recommendation: It's okay but if you want Barr at her best, try Winter Study or A Superior Death, my favorites.