Track of the Cat (Anna Pigeon Mysteries Book 1)

This book was first in Anna Pigeon Series. However, I had never had a chance to read it and had already read several other of this series.
I was not disappointed with going back to the beginning. The story was her usual good plot, characters and mystery.

Thoroughly enjoyable and would recommend to anyone who wants a book they cannot put down until it is finished!!!

Nothing like a good mystery that captures one's interest immediately! The deceased is found within the first few pages and it's a page turner from then on. I particularly like the settings for the Anna Pigeon mysteries. The National Parks are fascinating places and then add the extra interest of the park rangers from an insider's perspective, makes for a fun read all the way around. This is a fun summer read. I open the map from the National Park in which the novel is set so that I can 'map' along with the book!

Anything by Nevada Barr is going to be gritty, honest and pro-woman. Her protagonist, Anna Pigeon, is one of my favorite characters in literature. I have been reading avidly since I was 7 years old and am now 63. These stories bring a moral: preserve the environment, fight for the survival of endangered species, fight for what is important to you personally!

Someone at Friends of the Library recommended Nevada Barr. I'm enjoying her writing. Anna is an interesting character and the National Park settings are a great backdrop to the stories. I'm hooked. I'm the third Anna Pigeon mystery already

This book is poorly written. There was too much landscape description and not enough development of the characters and story. Too many descriptions of how much water is needed to survive the terrain. I kept waiting for the good, exciting parts. They never came. Can't believe I read the whole thing.

Good yarn with great descriptive language. However, the plot was predictable as soon as Harland Robert showed up. Wish she had shrouded him just a little more so the reveal could have been more shocking. Here environmentalist point of view is sympathetic but not all ranchers are vile slaughters of the wild. More balance please.

Summary from Goodreads:

"Anna Pigeon has fled New York and her memories to find work as a ranger in the country’s national parks. In the remote backcountry of West Texas, however, she discovers murder and violence. Fellow park ranger Sheila Drury is mysteriously killed, presumably by a mountain lion. But the deep claw marks Anna finds across Drury’s throat and the paw prints surrounding the body are too perfect to be real."

My Thoughts:

This is my second book read for my personal TBR challenge. I actually picked up my copy of this book from the used bookstore but then it just languished on my shelves. I'm grateful for the push to finally pick it up that this challenge gave me because I really enjoyed this one. It was a quieter mystery but it was the perfect choice for the reading mood that I was in. I loved this book for the setting alone. The author was able to just draw me in to the wilderness and stark back country of Texas within the pages of this book. Through Anna's love of nature and the area where she lived, I was also able to feel like I was there myself. I found that the mystery came almost second to me in comparison to just experiencing the atmosphere that Barr created within this book.

What I loved about this book besides the setting was the feel of it. It almost reminded me of a Sue Grafton novel although they are two very different type of books. I think it was the fact that both series are set in a different way of life - a time where technology and cell phones aren't the every day norm. Anna has to use a pay phone to make calls to her sister in New York and can barely type up reports that she needs to do. Both series feature a different type of investigating where it isn't all focused on forensics but instead focuses more on uncovering the secrets leading up to the crime. This was a shorter book but I still was so easily caught within the pages. I found myself surprised by the ending as I didn't see any of it coming. It just made the book that much more enjoyable and has me eager to continue on with this series (which is why I now have a copy of book two on my shelves ready and waiting).

Overall, I really enjoyed this quiet mystery and am very excited about this series in general. Luckily for me I believe I have many more books to look forward to. I'm two for two as well when it comes to books read for this challenge. Both have been really great reads for me and finally knocked a couple of books off of my TBR that have been on there for entirely too long. I don't plan on waiting long before moving on to the second book! I think that fans of mysteries and suspenseful reads will enjoy this book. I really do see a lot of comparisons to the Sue Grafton series so if you enjoy that one you may like this one as well. Easily recommended!

Bottom Line: A quiet mystery that sucked me into the beauty of its' surroundings!

Disclosure: I purchased my copy of this book from my local used bookstore.

*Caution some spoilers*

This book was torture to read. The only reason I didn't drop it in the first chapter was because it's a book club read. From the start, I wasn't a fan of the main character Anna. She finds the body of her coworker and it has been picked on by vultures. As one vulture gets closer to the body she thinks of a cartoon of vultures around a kill with one saying: "Ooooooweeeeee! This thing's been here a looooooooong time. Well, thank God for ketchup." Sorry, but that's not my idea of something to think about after finding your coworker dead and being eaten by vultures.

Then when she realizes she had been mauled by a lion. First she cries, not because she just found her coworker's dead body, but because now the animals will be hunted down and killed. Then she damns the dead woman and "ways to obscure the evidence appeared" in her mind. That's about when the author lost me, right there in the 2nd chapter. And unfortunately she didn't get me back as Anna didn't get any better in my mind.

I thought the ending was abrupt. Anna being a somewhat law enforcement officer, taking justice in her own hands instead of doing what she's supposed to do.

I guess this book just wasn't for me. I will not be continuing with the series and doubt I'll read anything else from this author.

Read from December 17 to 22, 2013

Audiobook

I'm late in the game regarding this author/series, but I really enjoy this book. It's another example of by library mystery book club recommending a series, I read it, and then I can't make the meeting because of life. (It's happening this weekend with another book I read - ugh!) The book club had us start at like book #16 or something which ended up being a prequel thank goodness. So I'm working my way through the series.

I like Anna a lot. I'm hoping though that later in the books she just shoots (or whatevers) the bad guy. I was chanting as I was listening to the audiobook, "Just shoot him, just shoot the idiot, don't listen to him anymore just shoot him". Thank goodness I wasn't on the train when I was chanting this because security definitely would have asked me if there was a problem.

Almost unknown when it came out in 1949, `Track of the Cat` contains an important message for our environmentally threatened world of 2009. Second novel of Walter Van Tilburg Clark, author of the famed `The Ox-Bow Incident, ` `The Track of the Cat` is also a masterful work by one of America's underappreciated literary giants.

Like its predecessor, `Track of the Cat` is set in the pine and juniper dotted foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. An isolated ranching homestead is where the drama unfolds. It's the early 1900`s and winter has crept in unusually soon to the Sierra. And something is attacking the Bridge family's prime herd of cattle.

The mayhem of the panicked cattle caught high up in the Sierra snowdrifts mirrors the tumult back at the Bridge family ranch house. Of the three Bridge family boys, the first to notice something gone awry, "...to hear the far-away crying, like muted horns a little out of tune," is the sensitive, introspective nature-lover, Arthur. But the eldest son, Curt, aggressive and cynical, brawn behind the ranch holdings, soon hears it too. Convinced that a giant mountain-lion----a `black painter` as he calls it---is harassing the family fortune, he soon drags his dreamy brother out on the hunt for the mysterious killer. While the maniacal Curt and otherworldly Arthur battle the elements in search of their elusive killer, another drama begins back home. Middle son Harold plays umpire in an increasingly tense conflict brewing between his naïve and comely soon-to-be wife, hyper-pious mother, drink besotted father and hysterical little sister.

While his brothers remain out hunting longer than expected, Harold attempts to calm the increasingly despondent mother and an increasingly drunken father. As Arthur's horse soon returns with its frozen and very dead master upon its back, the tense household evolves into a domestic free-for-all. Mother retreats into her citadel of fire and brimstone faith, blaming her son's demise on his `godless` and `heathen` ways. The father, like some inebriated Falstaff, attempts to mask his pain with false humor and ridiculous theatrics. Baby sister Grace disintegrates at the news of her favorite brother's death. Even the outsiders in the Bridge family saga, Gwen, Harold's barely tolerated fiancée and Joe Sam, the ranch's Native American cowpoke, are caught up in the Bridge's dysfunctional family feud. Patient and kind, Gwen fights with her conflicted desire to both escape the maelstrom engulfing her in-laws and at the same time, help out Harold with his domestic struggle. The taciturn wise man of the high desert, Joe Sam stonily and almost contemptuously watches as the white man's family undoes itself with greed and pride.

As if such melodrama were not enough, the novel climaxes with the unfolding of Curt's lonely and tragic tale. Left brother-less by the marauding and always unseen cat, Curt becomes obsessed with destroying the killer of his brother and devourer of the family fortune. The book's second half centers on Curt's drawn-out and painful demise from both an insane hubris and unforgiving Sierra blizzard. With each brilliantly crafted sentence, Clark painstakingly documents Curt's descent into a hell of his own making. Captain Ahab meets King Lear. This is page turning stuff and as one reviewer rightly remarked, the book's last half is reason enough to read the whole of `The Track of the Cat. ` Forget Jack London, Walter Van Tilburg Clark is the master chronicler of man versus nature. With his translucent prose, the pinion-studded hills and basalt-strewn peaks acquire a personality all their own. The natural world becomes a near-sentient antagonist to Curt's bumbling and blinded Oedipus. While always exquisitely hewn, Clark's prose is never anything but accessible and straightforward. While reading `The Track, ` I felt completely transported to Curt's lonely, surreal world, traipsing aimlessly through the October snow with bulky snowshoes, destruction and madness creeping ever closer.

Despite occasional lapses into hackneyed melodramatics, `The Track of the Cat ` grips its reader, never letting go. It is a truly engrossing tale spun in some of the finest wrought prose of post-1945 American literature. More than that, Clark's story provides an ominous parable for our troubled millennium. Its message is one espoused by the naturalist Arthur and shared by the aboriginal Joe Sam: those who refuse to acknowledge and accept their place on nature's mighty wheel are doomed to fall off it. The arrogant and rapacious Curt is not unlike us `civilized` folk who often feel we can manipulate the natural world to fit our own caprices. Clark's novel carries an ominous warning to the Curts of this world. With ice caps shrinking and precious resources dwindling, `The Track of the Cat` reminds us to give distance and respect to that giant `black painter` looming above, hungry, ready to devour us.

A friend recommended this series to me, so I started the book with excitement & anticipation. Unfortunately the beginning was a little bizarre and lagging for me. I felt like I entered the story after it had already begun, but quickly I was sucked in by the scenery and the main character, Anna Pigeon's, quirky personality. Partway through the book, I found myself a willing participant along for the ride on this mysterious rollercoaster of park ranger detective work. By book's end, I couldn't wait to begin the next installment. So reader beware and trudge through the opening; it's worth it!

Guadaloupe Mountains National Park used to be available to neighboring West Texas ranchers, and most of them aren't happy that this is no longer true. Especially, they'd rather the park did not encourage its cougar population to thrive. Cougars, everyone knows, are predators who love to snack on livestock. So why track them with radio collars, and try to protect them? The park staff itself hunts down a cougar - any cougar, it doesn't matter that it is impossible to identify the animal responsible - after Ranger Sheila Drury is found dead, with a cougar's tracks nearby and a bite wound on her neck.

Anna Pigeon, the ranger who finds Drury's body, sees a puzzle whose pieces refuse to fit together. A cougar whose front feet only leave tracks? That's just one of the problems with the "evidence" condemning the cats, whose survival already has Anna concerned. For the radio collared beasts have been vanishing from the park over the years, and no one can explain where they have gone. Anna has her suspicions - and telling her to accept Drury's death as a misadventure by wild animal, and move on, does not silence those suspicions or stop her from investigating. Even after her superiors make that into an order, and even after Anna has a misadventure of her own that almost ends in death.

This is the first of Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon mysteries, and it's a great debut. The setting is vividly rendered, the lead character conflicted but sympathetic, and the supporting characters intriguingly drawn. The story has twists and turns, and the ending stays mysterious until the final scenes. A really fun read!

--Reviewed by Nina M. Osier, author of 2005 science fiction EPPIE winner "Regs"

Anna Pigeon is introduced to us in this novel which sees her in Guadeloupe Mountains, Texas and getting around from her little ranger station by horse to patrol the National Park. Sometimes her horse has sore feet, as they do on such hard ground. She follows mountain lions by radio-collaring them to study how they interact with other species in the park ecosystem. When a human is found dead with big cat tracks nearby, the obvious blame falls where Anna believes it should not. She tries to speak with the ranchers, hunters and other interests in the area to see if she can find out what is really going on. When her own life is threatened however it becomes clear that the deadliest animal in the park is the human.
Anna was widowed young and this has left her with a drink problem, but having no bars in the proximity generally means that she can handle the matter. Her only relative is a sister in New York whom Anna phones regularly, but the sister being a shrink means that she gets more psychoanalysis than she wanted. We never really get to meet this sister so clearly she functions as a device to let us see what Anna has going through her head, since she doesn't have anyone else she can trust to speak with in most of the books.
The early books are full of nature study and heat, excellently written to involve us in the story.

I've been reading the Anna Pigeon series forever it seems, but in no particular order. Then I picked up a paperback copy of one I hadn't read at a book sale and just realized it was the very first Anna Pigeon mystery. I can't believe I had never read it before.

In Track of the Cat Anna is a fairly new National Park Ranger stationed at Guadalupe Mountains National Park in West Texas. She had become a ranger after her husband died in an accident in New York. Being far from that city and living in a beautiful natural setting helps, but of course doesn't bring her husband back. She still mourns.

As the story begins, Anna is completing a transect of the park looking for signs of mountain lions. Ranchers just outside the park are always complaining that lions from the park are killing their livestock, and the ranchers want to be able to hunt them. Anna loves the animals, and the park periodically does these transects to see if and where the cats are; they also have banded some of them. Anna comes to McKittrick Canyon and finds the body of another female ranger, apparently killed by a mountain lion.

Those of us who know Anna well know that she is a loner. When she needs to talk, she calls her sister, a psychiatrist in New York City. In this book though she makes a friend, which causes difficulty because the friend is also a suspect in the killing. You see, the ranger wasn't killed by a mountain lion. She was murdered.

That's all I'm going to tell you because this is every bit as good a story as the rest of the series. Once you read that first page, you're hooked and won't put the book down until the end. I always recommend Nevada Barr for readers who like strong women protagonists and masterful descriptions of nature, as well as witty internal dialogue. If you aren't an Anna Pigeon follower, please look for Nevada Barr in your local library or bookstore.

This series first caught my attention when I saw it was set in several different National Park Service properties. My husband and I love to visit National Parks, and have spent many a vacation and even anniversaries in one. So far, we've covered 14 of 58, which I don't think is too bad seeing how we live on the east coast. What it all adds up to is me being intrigued by not only the setting of this book, but the inside look at the Park Service.

Overall, I found the book to be pretty good. Anna is surely a flawed character -- commitment phobic, naturally suspicious and un-trusting, borderline alcoholic, and unable to recognize friendship when she sees it -- but she is still likeable. At first, she is only concerned with Sheila Drury's death because of its impact on the mountain lions she tracks, but eventually she realizes that it's a story much larger than that.

I did have a few quibbles about the ending. I thought it all came about rather suddenly, like all of the pieces in Anna's head clicked at once and she had the answer. I was a bit sad about who the culprit turned out to be, but I thought the ending wasn't taken quite far enough. I would have liked at least an epilogue to tie up the loose ends.

Having read most of the Anna Pigeon series, I did not realize that this was the first until reading some of the review material preparatory to writing this. I was deluded, first, because I had not realized that the pattern of having the heroine about the most physically abused leading character in the genre, had begun from the beginning. If she was 39 when this took place, as is mentioned, it is remarkable that she is still alive today given the terrible beating her body took here and in every succeeding book. What a remarkable specimen. Second, it is mentioned that she has come from New York City wherein she had some bad experiences. Without revealing anything, it can be said, as regular readers, who also are not reading in chronological order know, she later returns to that city for further park rangering in which she is once more given much to endure.
As to this book, it is a good start and lays down various aspects of the heroines character which make her an interesting example of the modern woman outdoing the men in her chosen profession, while at the same time showing that she is all-woman (with the aid of her psychiatrist sister at the other end of the phone) and some available man who finds her excitingly feminine despite her job. She is also, of course, highly sensitive to environmental issues and completely committed to Nature, in all its non-human forms. She is ready to kill a man but not an innocent animal. The latter is the fundamental problem that sets up this story: a park ranger is found apparently the victim of a mountain lion in the national park to which Anna is assigned. To Anna, the attribution of "murderer" to a lion, which requires that it receive the death sentence, is uncalled for, something is just not right about it. To kill an animal, whether guilty or innocent is unfair; to kill a random animal, as has to be done given the lack of identification of a particular guilty one, is too human, that is, inhumane.
From that starting point, other deaths ensue, Anna herself faces death more than once, and only she is motivated to pursue the issue. Meanwhile, as in all the books, we are enmeshed in the intricacies of her continuing self-analysis, doubts, commitments, loves and love-deprivations. In this book, we are also treated to a brief episode of doubt as to whether or not she is actually more attuned to a female than male sexual partner, love partner, just plain partner. This issue she lays before her sister as she does other crises of self.
One's reaction to the totality of this, and other of her books, will be, in part, influenced by the degree to which one's commitments are within a comfort range of the heroines. Similarly, ones interest will be impacted by the degree one likes a book with a steady stream of consciousness monologue by the lead character. None of Watson vis-a-vis Holmes or Hastings vis-a-vis Poirot. It is all Anna vis-a-vis Anna.
At any rate, I think the average reader will find a sufficiency of action, mystery and characterization, to keep her or him reading to the end with a degree of involvement sufficient to make it an entertaining enterprise.

This is the first in the continuing series of novels featuring Park Ranger Anna Pigeon. Typical of introductory novels to a series a good size portion of this one is spent establishing Anna's character and backstory. We learn that Anna is in her late thirties and following the sudden death of her husband had left her life in Manhattan to become a Ranger in the National Park System. She is currently assigned as the Law Enforcement Ranger in Guadalupe Mountains National Park in southwest Texas. While out in the backcountry checking for signs of cougars Anna discovered the body of a fellow ranger. At first glance it appeared as though one of the elusive mountain lions had attacked her but Anna was not so certain. Some details of the crime scene did not make sense to her leaving her unconvinced that the murderer walked on four legs rather than two. Before she manages to ferret out the truth though the body count will climb, and will nearly include her own.

This is a good beginning to a series. The author has created an interesting and flawed character in Anna. One who will undoubtedly have quite a few stories to tell. The setting of the rugged territory on the Texas/New Mexico border is beautifully described, brought to life so well that it becomes another character in the story. Unfortunately the setting comes to life a bit more than some of the other human characters, many of which remain just cardboard figures who deliver their needed lines and then leave the story. The ending is a bit of a shock, although not necessarily out of character or even unrealistic. The biggest complaint this reader has is that the author does withhold some information, which is not playing fairly with the reader. I have hope that these flaws will be corrected as the series continues.

After a friend steered me to the Nevada Barr series featuring Anna Pigeon, this book definitely got me hooked and I can't wait to read all the books in the series. I actually read Track of the Cat in paperback (it was a gift) and have a couple others in paperback and audible form (just got my Kindle a couple weeks ago, so will be reading the remainder of the series on it!)

Even though I tend to read a lot of light hearted fiction, Barr's mysteries draw me in and keep my attention, making it hard to put the book down. I like the descriptive passages that cover the physical environments of the national parks, and the pasages that cover the emotional and mental environments of the characters. Being a fan of national parks, the settings of Anna Pigeon's experiences are more than interesting to me. I have gotten my brother and his wife hooked on the series, too!

[...] - this is Nevada Barr's website and where I got the following list of her Anna Pigeon books. She has also written 3 other books (Bittersweet, 1984; Seeking Enlightenment . . .Hat by Hat, 2003; 13 1/2, 2009; and contributed to a 5th (Deadly Housewives, 2006) that is a collection of short stories by Nevada Barr and many other well known authors. The website is rather neat if you have time to check it out.

1) 1993: Track of the Cat (Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas)
2) 1994: A Superior Death (Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior, Michigan)
3) 1995: Ill Wind (Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado)
4) 1996: Firestorm (Lassen Volcanic National Park)
5) 1997: Endangered Species (Cumberland Island National Seashore of the coast of Georgia)
6) 1998: Blind Descent (Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico)
7) 1999: Liberty Falling (Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island National Monuments in New York City)
8) 2000: Deep South (Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi)
9) 2001: Blood Lure (Glacier/Waterton National Peace Park in Montana)
10) 2002: Hunting Season (Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi)
11) 2003: Flashback (Dry Tortugas National Park, a grouping of tiny islands 70 miles off Key West) Diana - paperback
12) 2004: High Country (Yosemite National Park in California)
13) 2005: Hard Truth (Rocky Mountain's National Park, Colorado) (14) 2008: Winter Study (Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior, Michigan)
15) 2009: Borderline (Big Bend National Park in Texas)

If you like hiking, National Parks, mysteries, an intelligent and resourceful female protagonist, this series offers these and more. Our library mystery group read this introductory mystery with Anna Pigeon as a Park Ranger and amateur sleuth who doesn't believe that a cougar has killed a fellow park ranger who is found out in the wilderness.

What is appealing about this mystery is the development of the characters. Love Anna's Manhattan psychologist sister who always has insightful and witty things to say. Sign me up for an appointment. Then there are some eccentric coworkers who bring out different aspects of Anna. Anna isn't the warm, gregarious type and admits it. She likes being out in the wilderness for a reason you think - she doesn't have to interact with too many people. However, if she's not altogether lovable, she has a cool intelligence and imagination combined with fearlessness. She's interesting, and if someone is interesting, you can forgive a lot.

The writing and plot are fresh and colorful. Some of us could have done with a little less description of the park, but we're not hikers and campers. If you are, you might really appreciate the descriptive nature detail. We all enjoyed this mystery and would happily read another one in the series to see how Anna and the other characters develop.

This book won both the Anthony and Edgar awards. While reading it, you can discern why. I was wondering how the author, Nevada Barr, learned to write so well. She has an MFA in theater and acted for 18 years, plus wrote. The combination of theater, writing, and her work at National Parks has provided the ideal background for a series like this. If you haven't sampled this series, and like original mysteries, begin reading here.