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Robyn Devara is a Canadian field biologist. She receives a call from an environmental enforcement officer who wants her help in identifying a bird. There was a suitcase full of dead birds that was smuggled in to the country. The authorities were able to identify all of the specimens except one, a beautifully colored bird of the macaw family. When Robyn sees the macaw, she experiences an incredible sense of excitement. The bird is a new species that has never been seen before. As a scientist, she is thrilled to be asked to go to Costa Rica with a group of fellow scientists. Her charge is to see if she can find other birds of the unknown species and document their behavior patterns. The scientific team is located in a remote jungle outpost and live in fairly primitive conditions. They very systematically survey the surrounding area and document their findings. The members of the team have various areas of expertise-snake experts, plants, etc. It's not long before Robyn discovers that the assignment is not going to be as straightforward as she thought. Several team members seem to be following their own agendas. There's the nominal female leader who is impossible to get along with; a chauvinistic professor who belittles his student assistants; a reformed smuggler who may be sharing information about the birds that are found with his former compatriots; and more. All in all, you could say there's trouble in paradise. The camp difficulties escalate until it's almost impossible for the team to continue with their initial mission. Several members are killed; others are falling prey to various illnesses. Although Robyn does find the mysterious macaw that she has been looking for, it seems only a matter of time before the poachers will also cash in on the discovery. MACAWS OF DEATH is part of the mystery genre known as "amateur sleuth", meaning that the protagonist is not a professional detective or law officer but more of an average citizen who becomes involved in some kind of criminous situation more or less accidentally. I am not normally a fan of this type of mystery since the amateur sleuth often tends to become involved for an unbelievable reason (think, "Jessica Fletcher") and to put themselves in the line of danger. MACAWS broke the typical mold by having a plausible reason for the lead character to be involved in finding out what happened. Robyn is an expert on macaws and thus has the ability to provide information on their behavior that is important to the narration. In addition, since the book is set in a remote jungle location, one would not expect to find a police department readily available to call upon when things go wrong at the job site so her involvement seemed natural. Where the book fell apart for me was in the final third. Almost every character in the book was either killed or felled by a dread disease. They were bitten by snakes, thrown into ant pits, poisoned, shot-way too much misfortune all around to really feel credible. I was disappointed to see this happen, as I quite enjoyed the book up until that point. On top of all that, the villain was totally predictable. Overall, I enjoyed the book until the characters all started having so many problems. I very much liked the lead character, her sense of humor, her passion for her work. However, Dudley's attempt to raise the tension by incapacitating so many of the characters weakened what was otherwise an engaging narrative.
Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, November 2003
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