Blind Descent by Nevada Barr
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Anna Pigeon is always beaten up so much, one would think she’d be permanently concussed, bruised, and broken. But she’s made in the style of 1970s’ male TV action heroes: gets a lickin and keeps on bouncing back up, albeit limping.
I like this series for its sticking to one viewpoint, not bouncing around between villain and heroine, which I find takes me right out of the story. I also like the slightly anti-social heroine, and the way she sets about solving a mystery or two. And I particularly like how this series introduces the reader to a different park and a different environment in every book in the series. In this one, it’s caves. I got a bit lost in the details, but I certainly had no trouble envisioning the darkness and claustrophobia of the caves Barr describes.
Publishers do this anti-reader thing of not supplying series in order or all of the published books to date, starting from the beginning, to libraries. Very annoying. And so since I wanted to read another Anna Pigeon book, I had to skip two in the series as the Toronto Public Library didn’t have them in stock in their ebook collection. It’s not so bad skipping a book or two in a series like Poirot by Agatha Christie, but Nevada Barr doesn’t keep her heroine static; Anna Pigeon grows and matures and changes throughout the series. Miss a book, and you miss a part of her life. Luckily, I seemed to have missed only one small thread of her story, and it didn’t impede my thorough enjoyment of another adventure in Anna’s life.
