Destroyer Angel: An Anna Pigeon Novel (Anna Pigeon Mysteries)

My first thought in seeing the title of Nevada Barr's latest novel was that it might have a religious context.

Far from it. The story tells of two women and their daughters who were starting a canoeing and camping trip in upper Minnesota. Lucky for them, park ranger, Anna Pigeon was also on the trip.

Fortunately, Anna wasn't in camp when four gangsters kidnapped the women. The kidnappers plan is to get the women to a landing site not far away. This way they can be picked up and proceed with getting a ransom payment. However, one of the women is a paraplegic and the leader of the kidnappers thinks she might be too much trouble.

Of the four women, one adult is a paraplegic and the other adult is the brains behind a company who has designed a wheelchair that can be used in a wilderness setting. They are accompanied by their daughters. The hoodlums had been told that there would be another woman in their group but when asked, the other women tell them that the other member of the planned group changed her mind.

Anna is late getting to the camp and sees what has transpired. She observes the plight of the women and although she is unarmed, she is like a Rambo character in that she goes up against four hoods without a weapon.

The leader of the group uses his cell phone to tell the person who will pay them that the women are captured and to send the plane.

Anna's survival skills are first manifested as she braves the cold and awaits her opportunity to get the best of the criminals. The women have to endure many things such as the sexual advances of one of the men, the hard terrain and the physical abuse of the men. They must also overcome the wilderness. Cries that might be from wolves or a dog the men injured and left for dead, are enough to unhinge one of their members who was a city dweller and afraid of what he might find in the woods.

Nevada Barr has brought her readers, Anna Pigeon, a woman who can survive in a world where men are unscrupulous and avaricious. Anna is smart, brave, and willing to do what it takes to save her friends.

As Anna follows her friends, awaiting an opportunity to save them, she speaks to the dog she has rescued. In this, she is like literature's Inspector Ian Rutledge who speaks to the ghost of his deceased friend Hamish.

Readers will enjoy the story and the character build up where we see the motivation of the criminals and the bravery of the women. However, I did have difficulty imagining a wheelchair bound woman traveling over rocky trails and crossing icy waters.

The author did a good job in telling the story from different points of view. We get Anna's thoughts and actions and also those of the leader of the gang and from the designer of the wilderness wheelchair. These points of view allows the reader to see the story unfold as if we were on the scene.

I have read most of the Anna Pigeon series, as well as her book "Hat by Hat." In general Barr is a top-notch writer, but she missed it on this one. Of course, of late I have liked the Anna Pigeon series less than the earlier books -- perhaps because Barr moves, as have too many current authors, into the more bizarre, violent sorts of crime.

In this book that problem is compounded by WAY too much information about how all the characters are feeling and thinking as well as by the fact that she tries to tell the story from too many people's points of view. She takes the story back again and again to retell the same incident from a different point of view. The result is that the narrative is muddied. I also wondered how the crooks had such detailed information about the women's trip; this is never really explained. The story itself is very cleverly plotted, the character development is excellent, and the ending is better than satisfying, so I wish she had not diluted the effect with these narrative problems.

I am a fan of Ms. Barr's Anna Pigeon novels. Her descriptions of the National Parks where the stories take place and the culture of the National Park employees, I always found fascinating. There is none of this in Destroyer Angel. The reader is only vaguely aware of the setting for this novel. Character development is nil. Some things are never really explained. Why did Dude shoot Reg? Did I miss something?
Anna usually gets beat up a few times in the other books but in this one everybody gets beaten and tortured over and over. It just gets you down after awhile. And boy, is Anna ever a man hating misanthrope. I'm a man and am usually pretty thick skinned but I really did start to get bugged with this book.
I hope Anna gets some help and improves her outlook on life. I don't know if I'll come back for another book filled with this much pointless misery.

INCLUDES SOME SPOILERS: I have read every book in the Anna Pigeon series, beginning with the first book entitled "Track of the Cat," which I read several years ago. I would venture to say that the first half of the series is far superior to the more recent books, at least in my opinion. Anna started out as a seasonal employee, a GS 03, and has worked her way up to a permanent Law Enforcement Ranger. The least characteristic, and most far-fetched, of the more recent offerings was when Anna performed an emergency C-section with a jack knife and then clung to the baby, even though it had been established that since the death of her first husband she did not want children. In "Destroyer Angel" Anna revisits two characters from a previous book -- Heath (who contrary to her name is a woman) and Heath's adopted daughter, Elizabeth. Heath is a paraplegic as the result of an accident, and Elizabeth is a survivor of a fanatical cult that Anna had to deal with a few years before. The three are on a camping trip accompanied by Leah,an inventor who may suffer from a high level form of autism (suggested throughout the narrative), her 13 year old daughter Katie, and an elderly dog, Wiley. While Anna is out on a solo day trip in a canoe, the two women and their daughters are taken captive by four thugs specifically sent to kidnap Leah and Katie.

The book is told in alternating chapters from the points of view of Heath, of Charles (AKA "dude") the head of the kidnappers and a sociopath who has an intense hatred for the handicapped, and Anna. Anna and the injured dog Wiley track the group hoping to kill or capture the thugs and save the women and girls. The chapters told from the point of view of Heath became redundant -- I for one found the endless repetition of Heath's odyssey in the jury-rigged wheel chair, put together by Leah, something to skip the third or fourth time it was recounted. And the dialog between Heath and Elizabeth did not seem typical to me of a teenage girl and her mother, but then it might be realistic for a pair who had gone through so much together. Charles's sections were chilling, as he slowly starts to reveal himself. Anna's sections started to become redundant similiar to Heath's, in that I didn't feel the need to tramp over every square inch of wilderness while she carried on long conversations with Wiley. And that is another thing -- it is not believable to me that a person would forget how to speak English to people and become feral in two days. Anna is continuing to be a more loopy character than she was in previous books in the series and I am not such a fan of this incarnation. I never really thought of Anna as suffering with OCD, but when she took precious time out to clean up trash left by the kidnappers, I sighed in the same way that I did when the other women didn't bring cell phones on the camping trip due to not wanting to "offend" Anna with technology. As a volunteer at a national park, I can attest that law enforcement rangers are not adverse to modern inventions that help them in their work, and like most in that profession would not leave their weapons at home, even on vacation.

All in all, in my opinion "Destroyer Angel" is a good, but not great, read and addition to the series. As I previously indicated, I am less than enchanted with the older Anna, and some of the interaction with Wiley borders on the paranormal (some will like this, others will see it as somewhat contrived -- even a dog lover such as myself falls into the latter camp in this regard). I think the series started to lose me somewhat when Anna remarried, and to an Episcopal priest yet! Anna, if not an out and out atheist, is at least an agnostic who refuses to participate in her husband's calling -- again, I don't quite buy this, but Paul Davidson is certainly the best husband (kind, carrying, and honest) of the uniformly bad lot of men Anna has encountered throughout the series. As an Episcopalian myself, I know that we are for the most part a very tolerant denomination, but I think this might be carrying it a little too far. Perhaps the next book will result in a return to the spirit of the younger Anna and not have her continue on a journey involving more and more flights of fancy.

I'm a big fan of Nevada Barr's early books, with a lot of background about the various national parks. This one has minimal plot and is just suspense and violence.

I think that Ms. Barr's earlier works were definitely more thoughtful and less violent, but it was the TERRIBLE, completely implausible and heinous ending that makes this the last Nevada Barr book I'll ever read.

SPOILER ALERT

So, at the end of the book one of the characters poisons the mastermind because he says they have no proof he was involved and he'll sue them if they accuse him. Even though we know he was in contact with the kidnappers via phone, so there should be some records. There is a connection between him and one of the women kidnapped, so he has a motive, a bad one, but a motive. So, HUGE loophole there. Fear of a lawsuit is justification for murder? I don't think so. Plus, the woman and the two teenage girls all laugh, LAUGH at the thought of this guy's impending demise. That was the most horrific part of the book (and there are a lot of horrific scenes) Yup, definitely done with Nevada Barr's books.

Love all the Anna Pigeon novels, but couldn't stomach this one. Unbelievable characters & situations and way too much violence. Disgusted by the ending with the women laughing over their final kill. Hope Barr gets back to writing creative mystery stories.

Having read all the Nevada Barr books, and disappointed with the just prior Anna Pigeon outing, “Burn”, we were hoping for a return to a National Parks locale and a suspenseful tale featuring the derring-do of our mature leading lady / forest ranger. Unfortunately, we found this 17th Pigeon novel, “Destroyer Angel”, a rather predictable, mostly boring story about a kidnapping gone awry. When Anna goes on a camping vacation with two of her girlfriends, each with one teenaged daughter, the other four are setting up camp for the night as Anna is treating herself to a little private canoe ride on the river. Meanwhile, four thugs apprehend the women in one of the most poorly planned kidnappings anyone could dream up. With almost no provisions, the men plan to hike quite a few miles with the captives, one of whom is a paraplegic, to meet up with a private plane elsewhere in the wilderness. When Anna returns and scopes out what is happening, she resolves to try to kill off the four bad guys one by one, despite no weapon (whereas of course they’re armed), etc. If that sounds a little far-fetched, we agree – and unfortunately, that’s 100% of the plot, which really drags on throughout most of the book. One can almost predict what happened; and other than the obvious money grab, we never learned the real reason for the kidnapping until the final few pages.

We notice the author’s publications are now spaced further apart than before, a sign that maybe Barr and Anna Pigeon are losing their steam?

When I read Hard Truth, I decided I was finished with Nevada Barr's books. I found it distasteful and the cruelty to the animals sickening. Now it's years later and I decided to give it another try with The Rope and Destroyer Angel. Nothing doing. Both full of unnecessary violence and cruelty. Can't tolerate it.

I loved the earlier books. Read them all. That's it for me. So sorry.

I've read 100 pages and that's it for me. Have read all of this series...didn't much like the last two .....and certainly am disappointed in this one. I read for enjoyment....don't need this much depression and violence in my life.