A Superior Death - Anna Pigeon, Bk 2
Author: Nevada Barr

The inaccessible wreck, Kamloops, has rested at the bottom of Lake Superior for nearly seven decades, the bodies of its ill-fated crew eerily preserved in the frigid waters. But now there is an extra corpse on board -- a newly slain interloper suspiciously dressed in 1920's clothing. — It is Anna Pigeon's job as a ranger with the U.S.. National Park Service to help protect wild and lonely places from civilization's corrupting touch. Now a bizarre mystery held firmly in a Great Lake's icy grip is drawing Anna into a nightmare of greed and cold-blooded murder. And what she finds waiting beneath the surface could prove fatal.

Second book in the Anna Pigeon series. This one takes place in Isle Royale National Park located on Lake Superior. The mystery surrounds the death of a local diver who is found at a deep-water diving site on an old wreck at the bottom of the lake. He is dressed in what appears to be clothes worn in the 1920s. How did he die, and how did he get to the bottom of the lake? This is Anna's dilemma in this second of her adventures. As usual, I enjoyed Barr's descriptions of the locale and the characters involved in the mystery including an incestuous set of twins and a bizarre couple who insist another person was eaten by her husband along with a case of pickle relish! I had never heard of Isle Royale but it sounds like a very interesting place to visit especially if you enjoy fishing or boating. Mild recommendation for this one.

Adding to a box.

From a book box. I've heard of, but never read, anything in this series. Thanks!

Quite good. New author to me.
A diver is found dead in an old shipwreck, but what happened. Anna collects and discards lots of suspects, as she works her National Park Ranger job in this national park. I looked it up on Wikipedia - although technically in Michigan, it's really almost in Canada. Quite a boat ride to get to it!
This one will travel forward as a wishlist tag.

wishlist book. Enjoy!

The book arrived safely today; many thanks for the wishlist tag! I'd read about the real-life shipwreck of the Kamloops, and was curious to see how it figures in the novel.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book - and was pleased to find that the Kamloops connection was not only an integral part of the plot but that more than one scene took place there; sometimes a themed book barely gives a nod to the topic. I found Anna to be an interesting mix of gutsy, talented, flawed, and haunted - and if it seemed a bit odd to me that a ranger with talent in the high-desert regions would be tapped to work on the water, well, it does provide excuses for the author to explore many different types of parks.

Lots of interesting characters here, many of them charming, some reprehensible - the lack of punishment for the pedophile was irksome in the extreme. The solution to the crime involved one of the more cold-blooded characters I've seen in recent fiction, with an unexpected twist to the motive - and one that the villain could easily have avoided, but in that case there'd have been no solution at all, so perhaps it's just as well!

[There's a short TV Tropes page on the series.]

I plan to leave this book in the gazebo next to the hotel at around 12:45; hope the finder enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in NH here.]

*** Released for the 2017 Keep Them Moving release challenge. ***

*** Released for the 2017 September Sapphire release challenge, for its mostly-blue cover. ***