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    A Superior Death
    A Superior Death
    A Superior Death
    Audiobook11 hours

    A Superior Death

    Written by Nevada Barr

    Narrated by Barbara Rosenblat

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Nevada Barr quickly attracted the attention of mystery fans when her first Anna Pigeon mystery, Track of the Cat, appeared. Now she immerses the intrepid park ranger in a perilous search that will take her far below the waters of Lake Superior. As Anna spends her days patrolling its shores, the surface of Lake Superior fills with tourists. In the depths below lie an ancient ship and the bones of its sailors. But when two tourists dive down to see the wreck, they discover that a new body has joined the skeletal crew. As Anna tries to discover how and why, she encounters secrets darker and more deadly than the waters surrounding the corpse. Filled with suspense, A Superior Death is also laced with Anna Pigeon's self-deprecating humor. With Barbara Rosenblat's spirited narration, you'll immediately be scanning the splendid setting and looking for clues through the eyes of the savvy naturalist.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateNov 26, 2007
    ISBN9781449801205
    A Superior Death
    Author

    Nevada Barr

    NEVADA BARR is a novelist, actor, and artist best known for her New York Times bestselling, award-winning mystery series featuring Anna Pigeon. A former National Park Service Ranger, she currently lives with her husband in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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    Reviews for A Superior Death

    4/5

    364 ratings24 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Ooof. This one was so well done that it was nearly impossible for me to read parts of it, averse as I am to the idea of being under water, or way out on open water. NPS Ranger Anna Pigeon has been transferred out of the desert to the Isle Royale park on upper Lake Superior. She's not real happy about it, missing the clean dry heat and fog-free environment of her previous assignment. But she's got the hang of small boats, is certified to dive, and finds many aspects of the job personally, if not financially, rewarding. Her co-workers, both permanent and seasonal, are a motley assortment of competence, quirkiness and stupidity. She suspects some of them are up to unethical, if not criminal pursuits. When the body of one of the best professional divers on the lake is found drowned without gear, and oddly dressed at that, on an old shipwreck, her suspicions are confirmed, but nothing, from the water down there, to the air above, and many actions taking place in between, is clear. Lots of good bits of business in this one, offbeat dark-ish humor, and some near-deadly underwater action (which I truly had to force myself to read without skimming). Can't wait to see where Anna finds herself next.
    • 4/5
      This was my first Nevada Barr book. Set in the great north woods on the great lakes, Amanda has left the dessert of the Southwest behind and is beginning a new life in a less hospitable climate. There are lots of red herrings, and I was surprised when the murderer was revealed.
    • 4/5
      Good, entertaining murder mystery, with a touch of humor.
    • 3/5
      This second book in the Anna Pigeon series, seemed to drag a bit for me. Anna, our intrepid, forty-something, park ranger, finds herself in Isle Royale National Park (around Lake Superior) in the summer. Fresh from deployment in the Texas desert, this is a whole new world for Anna. She has to learn to pilot a boat in the tricky waters of Lake Superior, and, horror of horrors. to deep sea dive. Near an historical dive near a ship that went down at the beginning of the 20th Century, a much fresher body is found. As bizzarre as it seems, he is found wearing the full regalia of a 19 Century sea captain down at the bottom of the lake. Anna finds herself risking her life trying to find out what happened to this local man. Her investigation uncovers much more than answers to the murder. There is smuggling, child abuse, blackmail, illegal drug trafficking, and whatever else Nevada Barr could throw out. I found all these sideline crimes and nefarious dealings took away from from the original mystery, and I found Anna to be abrasive and unlikeable as well. I enjoyed the first book in the series, but I'm not sure I'll read anymore after this. I like the background of various national parks throughout the US, and the close-to-nature atmosphere of these books, but the plot just seems to veer off here and there in every direction throughout the book.
    • 3/5
      The first half of this book was two stars at best, it was very slow and with few likeable characters I had to push myself to keep reading. I wouldn't have bothered but I'd read the first book in the series years ago and like it quite a bit so I figured that I'd push on. The characters in the second half don't get any more likeable except for Anna and her roommates, but the action ramps up and she starts to solve the mystery which pushed a two star book up to three.
    • 4/5
      A good one, but some corrections. Moose are not herd animals. Elk are. And sure, a Pileated woodpecker could drop a red feather, but since it would be from its head (the only place they are red) a person would have a damn hard time finding it. I like the earlier novels in this series; they're less focused on the cruelty and violence Anna endures.
    • 4/5
      This book is the second in the long running Anna Pigeon series and is set on and around Lake Superior. The main character, Anna Pigeon, is a park ranger who has recently transferred from Big Bend National Park in Texas to the summer chill of Isle Royale National Park on Lake Superior. Due to terrible storms, Lake Superior has claimed many ships including the Edmund Fitzgerald, famously memorialized in a Gordon Lightfoot song, and the Kamloops, which sunk in 1927 and is the focus of this book. In fact, there are five perfectly preserved corpses still on the Kamloops.

      When a diving team returns from a dive there, they show Anna a video of six corpses floating in the ship. Anna knows there are only five, so she and a ranger team, accompanied by an FBI agent, dive down to bring up the body of a local man. It turns out there are plenty of suspects, including his diving partners, an alcoholic park ranger who is jealous, and he disappeared on his wedding night but his wife never reported him missing. It's a complex story filled with colorful characters. The history of the island is a character in itself.

      This was a clever and suspenseful mystery with an interesting plot. The characters were very well written and there were plenty to choose from so the eventual killer is not apparent from the beginning. Anna is a great main character, flawed and struggling, and I look forward to reading more about her in the future.
    • 4/5
      It's been a long time since I read this book but I have read the entire series, up until the most current book and I really like it. I love how the series is set outdoors in the different parks.
    • 2/5
      Anna Pigeon returns for her second mystery. This time she has left the southwest and is now assigned to Isle Royale National Park, in Lake Superior, just north of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It’s remote and a very different environment from what she was used to, and she’s having some trouble adjusting. She continues to rely on frequent phone calls to her sister, Molly, in New York, and to the numbing effects of a bottle of wine. When a body is found floating within a wreck on the lake bottom, Anna has to confront some of her own fears to help recover the victim. But it seems this was not an accidental drowning – the man was murdered.

      There are plenty of suspects, despite the remote location – an alcoholic has-been with marital problems was jealous of the him; the victim’s own wife didn’t report him missing; his boat and business were left to two twin siblings who are not relatives; a sleazy park employee who had to leave his previous post quickly has been seen sneaking around; and a hippie couple who are being blackmailed may have had enough.

      Barr writes a decent suspense novel. The action moves fast and I was caught up in the mystery. There are enough clues to let the reader guess the perpetrator, but I was certain only a few pages before Anna herself had figured it out. I like that Anna is intelligent, strong and resourceful. In general, she takes matters into her own hands and acts with due caution. However … the book had several serious editing flaws. We’re told Anna is a vegetarian – several times – then she’s eating a tuna fish sandwich. The name of one of the twins is suddenly changed to that of Anna’s sister for 4 or 5 mentions on a single page before being correctly referenced for the balance of the book. A key piece of evidence is “stolen” by one of the suspects, and later the authorities are examining it.

      What really made me lower the rating, however, is an issue with a senior administrator making a joke about having a child “escorted” by a known pedophile. That is just NOT funny, and such a comment would – I hope – get said manager fired. But no one even raises an eyebrow in the novel. Anna actually smiles! I know this was first published in 1994, but really, WHAT was Barr (and her editor and agent and publisher) thinking?!
    • 5/5
      Great read. I couldn't figure out who the killer was. Not very often do I get that kind of pleasure. :)
    • 5/5
      I love everything I've read by Barr (and there are only a few I haven't). This is one of my favorites.
    • 4/5
      Anna is a likable protagonist because she is complicated - she's tough but wounded. She can be terrified but she will do something anyway because she won't let herself be ruled by her fears. The mystery is complicated to make the reading interesting,.
    • 4/5
      This was one of the more memorable of Barr's books for me, partly because of the setting and also because of the part underwater activities play in the plot. Those scare me.
    • 4/5
      Anna Pigeon is back for another season. This time she is serving as a ranger for Isle Royale National Park, an island in Lake Superior off the coast of Michigan which is known for its sunken ships and great deep fresh water diving. This second book is packed with even more colorful characters than the first book - the whimsical Coggins-Clarke duo, the oddly well-coiffed Patience and her tweenaged daughter Carrie Ann, twins Holly and Hawk with a big secret and their diving company partner Denny Castle, and Pizza Dave to name just a few. She also has visits from her now housemates (in the off season), Christina and Ally.What I am really appreciating about Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon series is how vibrant and interesting her characters are and how much is going on in each book, yet somehow it all still seems totally plausible. There was only one spot in this book where I thought, "come on." I was frequently chuckling about the character quirks and what not and thoroughly engrossed in the story. It wasn't just the solution to the mystery that kept propelling me to read more and more though. I wanted to spend more time with the characters and hear more of the goings on at ISRO.No doubt about it, I will be reading the next Anna Pigeon book before too long!
    • 4/5
      A Superior Death by Nevada Barr is the second in the Anna Pigeon series. Anna is a National Park Ranger and in this book she is stationed at Isle Royale National Park, located off the coast of Michigan on Lake Superior.These mysteries are light reading but give you the illusion of visiting a National Park which is the number one reason why I enjoy these books. Because Isle Royale is a well known deep-water dive site, with many famous wrecks nearby, the mystery involves diving the frigid waters of Lake Superior. Anna herself is a very likeable character whose internal dialogue is often amusing and shows her to be a sensible, straight forward kind of gal. The setting is well described and the mystery was just tantalizing enough to keep my attention. A quick read but rewarding in it’s description of this wilderness park along with it’s native flora and fauna. I will certainly be following Anna Pigeon to her next posting.
    • 4/5
      A self-avowed "desert rat," Anna Pigeon finds herself out of her element when she is reassigned to Isle Royale National Park on the North Short of Lake Superior. Below the frigid waters lies the Kamloops, a sunken 1927 ship - the find resting place of its five victims. But when divers surface with a tale of seeing a sixth body, Anna must break the Great Lake's grip on its icy secrets.
    • 4/5
      As one of the ranger assigned to Michigan's Isle Royale park, out on Lake Superior, one of Anna's duties is to give permits to recreational divers who want to check out the sunken wrecks that dot the area,. This includes the one that entails the most dangerous dive, the Kamloops, which still contains the bodies of five crew members, preserved since their deaths in 1927 by the icy old water of the Great Lake. But when the divers show her some pictures they took down there and the pictures show six bodies, it soon looks like murder is the only way to explain that new inhabitant of the ship.The sixth man turns out to be expert local diver Denny Castle, murdered shortly after his recent wedding and found in the ship, dressed, bizarrely, in the uniform of a 19th century ship's captain.Who could have wanted him dead? Maybe the twin brother and sister who were his partners on a dive boat and look to now inherit the business. Or maybe his new wife, who never reported him missing and takes the news of her husband's death rather oddly. Or how about Anna's fellow ranger Scotty Butcus, whose own wife has appeared to have gone missing as well. And what of the rumors that she and the dead man, Denny, were involved. Oh, there are any number of odd and quirky characters on the island who might be guilty of something, including one very strange murder.I have read a number of books in the Anna Pigeon series and picking up one is always like returning to spend some time with an old friend. It's comfortable and you know that you are going to have a good time. Anna is a great character, funny and smart and far from perfect, sustained by regular chats with her NYC therapist sister, Molly and a glass or two ...or three or four of wine, something which at this point in the series appears to be a bit of an issue for Anna. But we will forgive her....she is only human. And we like her.Anna's take on the tourists visiting the parks, her fellow rangers and the running of the parks themselves is always fun and one suspects spot on, since the author was herself a park ranger. I love visiting a different National Park in each book...OK, I think some parks may make more than one appearance ...and seeing them through Anna and Nevada Barr's eyes. Maybe someday I will get a chance to visit them in person, but in the meantime, visiting them with Anna and her friends, with a healthy dose of death and danger, is always a fun time and an entertaining read.Ms. Barr, if by chance you might read this (ok, it may be unlikely, but I can try) I have only one suggestion for you, maybe for your next book. In fact, just three words...Acadia National Park!
    • 4/5
      This book takes place on Isle Royale which is located in Lake Superior not very far from the Canadian border. I am putting a link to a map of the park because I really wished I had one while I was reading this book. Anna Pigeon is stationed at Amygdaloid Ranger Station for the summer. One of the attractions of Isle Royale is the chance to scuba dive to ship wrecks. A private ship that takes divers to these wrecks often stops at the Amygdaloid docks and Anna has come to know the operators quite well. When two Canadians mention that they have seen a body aboard one of the wrecks it is Anna's duty to check into this. The wreck is a long way down and the water is very cold so it is a hazardous dive. Anna finds that there is a body on the wreck and it belongs to one of operators of the private diving concession. He had just gotten married and he was a very experienced diver so how he got aboard the wreck, dressed in an old sailor's costume and without any diving tanks is a considerable mystery.Soon Anna is checking into this death and other occurrences plus doing her ranger duties. The finish is worthy of an action movie.I always enjoy books from this series, if only to learn more about natural places in the USA. Isle Royale sounds like a fascinating place if you have a boat to get around. Since I don't it is unlikely I will ever be there so I appreciate Nevada Barr shedding a little light on it.
    • 5/5
      This was my second Nevada Barr mystery and it was even better than the first. Death, deep sea diving, colorful characters, a pensive, intelligent park ranger detective...a new locale for each mystery, natural descriptions of the parks. What more could you want in a mystery? I like that she creates loads of possible suspects. Sure I guessed the right one 1/2 way through but there was still plenty of suspense after that.
    • 4/5
      Mystery in the Anna Pigeon series - this one not in the hot deserts of the South, but on the cold shores of Lake Superior. I like Anna Pigeon, greying Park Ranger with a history and a bit of a drinking problem, a lot, and while you can hardly call these books "cozy", I find them very enjoyable.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this one better then her first book,Track of the Cat, but it didn't keep my attention as much as I had hoped.
    • 4/5
      In Nevada Barr's A Superior Death, National Park Ranger Anna Pidgeon has moved from the punishing heat of West Texas (Track of the Cat,) to the pristine and icy wilderness of Michigan's Isle Royale National Park - ISRO to those in the know. When two scuba-diving tourists discover the body of local diver Denny Castle submerged in the wreck of the Kamloops 195 feet below the surface Lake Superior, Anna must riddle out the mystery of his death - a tragic accident, or vicious murder?After reading A Superior Death, I must declare that I am indeed "hooked" on the world according to Anna Pidgeon! Her character holds all of the strengths, weaknesses, vulnerabilities and awkwardness of a real person, and is incredibly easy to relate to. The other characters in the book are, well.. wacky - most of them have no moral center, but are compelling and interesting nonetheless. I was very happy to see Christina and Allison from the first book in the series. Chris and Ally provide a sense of "home" for Anna that she desperately needs in her life.Aside from it's strong and quirky characters, A Superior Death is also a very easy and quick read with a wonderful plot. The murder/mystery was puzzling right up to the end, making it impossible to put down. The details Nevada Barr provides about the Park and it's wildlife, give the reader true insight into what it means to work for the Park Service. The author's sense of place is astonishingly realistic, putting the reader into the freezing water with Anna. As a bonafide "land-lubber" myself, it was a bit creepy feeling the dark, frigid water crushing down on Anna as she had to dive the Kamloops to help recover Denny's body. I enjoyed A Superior Death more than the first book in the series (Track of the Cat.) As always, I enjoyed Nevada Barr's vivid description of the Park and was entertained by her off-the-wall characters. I can't wait to get the next couple of books from the library (or from my Mom,) so that I can see what Anna gets into next!
    • 3/5
      Nevada Barr novels are perfect companions for long airline flights. They are easy, they are fun, and they make the time pass quickly. This is another good book in a wonderful series.
    • 5/5
      One of my favorite Nevada Barr books. The setting is so spooky and evocative!