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Audio book available from www.wfhowes.co.uk and www.ukaudiobooks.co.uk HIGH COUNTRY marks the 13th outing for Park Ranger Anna Pigeon, but this time she is working undercover. She has been given a job as a waitress in the historic Ahwahnee restaurant in Yosemite National Park where four young concession workers have been missing for a couple of weeks. Search and rescue teams have been unable to locate them but the Park chief suspects there may have been more to the disappearance than meets the eye. Anna takes the place of one of the missing girls in the staff dormitory and tries to bridge the age gap with her friends, whilst trying to get the low-down on the largely hostile restaurant workers. A group of highly suspicious and boorish city boys have taken over the home of one of the other missing people, and it seems likely that they know something about what is going on too. Overhearing them make a casual reference to a location in the park, Anna consults her maps and narrows down the possibilities. On her day off she treks off to see what she can find, and then the tension really kicks in as Anna faces a fight for her own survival. Anna is now hurtling towards 50 and the physical blows she takes along the way would stop most of us lesser beings well before the conclusion of the story. I found this aspect rather hard to swallow, but I suppose it's the usual trade-off for a gripping thriller. HIGH COUNTRY is really a book of two halves. Just as I was settled in and enjoying Nevada Barr's usual mix of dogged sleuthing and vicarious enjoyment of the beauty of Yosemite National Park wearing its snowy winter coat, the tale turns into a harrowing story of survival. Anna has to draw on violent and sociopathic inner qualities to stay alive, and some of the events are nightmarishly graphic. Her behaviour troubles her deeply too as she seeks to tie up all the loose ends of a very dangerous case. Despite this, I found I actually liked Anna a lot more than I did in some of the early books in the series. The narrator, Barbara Rosenblat, is as good as ever, and hit just the right tone. A memorable tale, and a great narrator.
Reviewed by Bridget Bolton, February 2005
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