Carlotta Carlyle trys to find who is killing illegal immigrants.
QUOTE:
"The radios Gloria's got in her old Fords can barely catch the AM top-forty stations, the ones that broadcast as twenty million kilohertz." EDITORIAL COMMENT: Huh?? That's a whole lotta hertz!!
Carlotta Carlyle gets a computer and searchs for whoever is beating up taxi drivers..
QUOTE:
"I have an air splint," he said, "left over from a skiing sprain..." "Why didn't my doctor give me one?" I asked... "You in an HMO?" he asked. "Yeah." "Crutches are good enough for the like of you." "Thanks a heap."
Jack is sent off to stay with his aunt and uncle who live in a small town in Iowa by his divorcing parents. Parent who seem rather distant, even forgetting his name. Something oddly magic is going on in Iowa, and Jack seems to be in the middle of it! Read the advance reading copy.
Ranger Anna Pigeon investigates a murder in Lake Superior. Duh. A really good book. I figured out what the plunder was about thirty pages before Anna. Of course, I didn't have all her distractions! Again, I really like her books. You learn a lot about the park system and nature. I wanted to be a forest ranger when I was a kid.
QUOTE:
"With the fading of the light the guardians of the island began to reclaim her shores. A persistent whining burned in Anna's ear. A stinging itch cut through the thin fabric of her shirt. Again she missed the desert. There if something bit, one usually died of it. She hated this nickel and diming to death, one bloody sip at a time."
Ranger Anna Pigeon investigates violence in a cave near Carlsbad Caverns, which I can't spell and can't hold the book close enough to see because I need both hands to type!
Ms. Barr often writes some clever dialogue, but plots just seem odd; or patchy in places. E get cyber-bullied, Anna nearly dies, there's a cool island in Maine.
Anna goes to New Orleans to recover from her latest ordeals, find child-prostitution to foil. Some pretty disturbing scenes, and very little park stuff. And no map!
Words I Had To Look Up:
avidity (pg. 114) -- Ardent desire or craving; eagerness.
Quote:
Scars on the outside simply kept score; it was the scars on the inside one had to watch out for. (pg. 63)
Under certain circumstances crime could be considered a career choice. Littering was just a character flaw. (pg. 227)
Library Quote:
Not for the first time, she was glad she never went anywhere without her library card...She made a mental note to suggest to the Estes Park librarian that the cards be made with at least one good slashing edge. (pgs. 170-171)
Ranger Anna is in Cumberland Island National Seashore off the coast of Georgia. A plethora of bizarre clues lead to an unexpected (to me, anyway) conclusion. Pretty good!
QUOTE:
"I'm shot! It's bad, " he mimicked in a falsetto. "It looks like it's going to leave a real nasty bruise," Mona said in Anna's defense. "Oh, no! Not a bruise!" Rick squealed.
Anna takes a position at Rocky Mountain National Park where she has issues with God, a polygamous religious commune, and a serial killer. Not necessarily in that order.