Book Review: “Track of the Cat” by Nevada Barr
Håfa adai! Welcome to my review of Track of the Cat, the first book of the Anna Pigeon Mystery series by Nevada Barr.
This book review consists of two parts: a spoiler-free plot summary and my thoughts on the story. In the second part, I give my personal rating and break down the setting and worldbuilding, storytelling, cast of characters, and themes. There may be some lightweight spoilers—such as how characters interact with each other and the world around them—but I will not give away any major plot twists or endings. I want to share my opinions of the book and maybe encourage you to purchase a copy of your own.
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Spoiler-Free Plot Summary
Anna Pigeon’s life is unrecognizable from what it was only a few years ago. After the death of her husband, she left New York City to build a new life for herself as a Law Enforcement Ranger at Guadalupe Mountains National Park in west Texas. Out of the concrete jungle and into the desert, Anna finds herself surrounded by uprooted newcomers and “good ol’ boys” alike. And what was supposed to be a calm and uneventful fresh start in life is turned upside down when Anna and her colleagues discover the lifeless body of Sheila Drury, a fellow National Park Service park ranger.
Claw marks and paw prints indicate that Sheila Drury most likely fell prey to a mountain lion. But Anna’s instincts that the evidence is too good to be true is impossible for her to ignore. The more Anna uncovers, the more she doubts what the official records state happened to Sheila. And only incomplete pieces of the puzzle are emerging. Who could the young ranger have gotten on the wrong side of in less than a year after joining the park staff? Was the young woman a prey to wildlife? Or was she the victim of a different kind of predator?
My Thoughts on Track of the Cat: 3.75 stars
Nevada Barr’s Track of the Cat was the November 2024 selection for the book club I am a member of. This book checked so many of the boxes the individual book club members had in their minds: murder mystery, public lands, and wildlife.
Track of the Cat begins with the death of a woman that initially appears to have been either accidental or the result of an unfortunate encounter with dangerous wildlife. According to statistics compiled by the U.S. National Park Service in 2024, an average of 7 deaths occur every week in national parks across the United States. Approximately 50% of these deaths are accidental, 20% are due to medical reasons, 10% have undetermined causes, and 19% are determined to be intentional. This terrifying statistic attributes to both true crime and fictional murder mysteries containing entire categories or subgenres dedicated to missing persons cases and murders that occur on public lands in the United States.
Nevada Barr does an incredible job of setting up the environment of Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Her descriptions of the landscape are vivid without being overwhelming. National Park Service lands across the United States tend to be located in remote areas. As a result, the housing areas provided for NPS staff also tend to be remote. This sense of seclusion is further emphasized in Track of the Cat by the small number of side characters Anna interacts with throughout a majority of the story. Although the cast includes over a dozen individual characters, Anna spends most of her time interacting with only a few of them. This makes the events seem so much more insular to Anna and those few other characters.
As the lead character in a murder mystery, however, Anna Pigeon sure does make a lot of dumb mistakes. I would not say she is incompetent—I would not have cared to finish the book if that were the case—but she did definitely annoy me more than once. There were scenes where I caught myself mentally yelling at her to stop doing whatever it was she was doing. But I do not think this is inherently a bad quality in the writing. Considering that Track of the Cat is the first of 19 Anna Pigeon novels, this gives plenty of room for her to grow as a character and enhance her skills as an investigator and park ranger.
When it comes to the storytelling itself, I go back and forth regarding how I feel about Nevada Barr’s narration and prose. Being that this is an Anna Pigeon novel, the narrative follows the point of view of Anna Pigeon. Track of the Cat was first published in 1993 and, as one would imagine, there are many examples of outdated terms, technology, and language throughout the story. That is not to say that a lot of the language Nevada Barr depicts is no longer in use today. Thirty-one years may have passed since the publication of Track of the Cat, but the “good ol’ boys” club that Anna Pigeon encounters remains alive and thriving.
My overall rating for Nevada Barr’s Track of the Cat is 3.75 out of 5 stars. The overall plot is simple yet horrifyingly believable. I was able to guess who did it pretty early on in the story, but how they did it was a surprise to me. There are aspects of the narrative that are outdated, yet it also presents a complicated and nuanced experience of someone within the LGBT+ community. There were aspects of it that could have been handled better. But this story is now 31 years old.
Dångkulo' na' saina ma'åse'! Thank you so much for reading my review of Track of the Cat, the first book of the Anna Pigeon Novel series by Nevada Barr.
Rating Cheat Sheet
4.75 - 5.00 stars: Everyone should read this book! (If you’re into that sort of thing.)
4.00 - 4.50 stars: I appreciated many aspects of this book. I recommend it!
3.00 - 3.75 stars: I liked some aspects of this book. I won’t revisit it, but someone else might really like it.
2.00 - 2.75 stars: There were some things I appreciated about this book, but I do not recommend it.
0.25 - 1.75 stars: I do not recommend this book. I did not enjoy or appreciate the experience of it.
Post Date: 25 November 2024
Published: 1 January 1993
Publisher: Avon
