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Hard Truth

by Nevada Barr

Hard Truth takes Nevada Barr's heroine, Ranger Anna Pigeon, into one of the most grisly situations of her career. A number of others have commented that the violence in the latter half of the book is too much, but since the complainers are primarily females with children and the subjects are also children, I have to take that with a grain of salt. Readers of any murder mystery novel are normally used to violence, and this assuredly is no exception. Nevada Barr has used her very fertile imagination to create a human monster who delights in the pain of his subjects. This is fiction, after all, even if it is based on all-too-uncomfortable fact.

Nevada Barr is well-known for her protagonist Anna Pigeon as well as her descriptions of the wild country this fictitious ranger explores. The beauty of the Rocky Mountain National Park is the current setting for the horror and unlovely circumstances taking place there. Three girls have gone missing from an uncompromising, fundamentalist-type religious retreat in the park, and only two of them appear a month later, after thorough searches have found nothing. The two girls claim memory loss and no recollection of why or how they finally came back to civilization, much less anything about the remaining girl.

Anna Pigeon has accepted her dream job in the Rocky Mountain National Park, but although recently wed to Sheriff Paul Davidson, he has also accepted a dream job back in Mississippi. So they agree to part for a year to explore the depths of their ideal positions, and perhaps rejoin after that time, with one of them agreeing to move. After the discovery of the missing two girls, ages twelve and thirteen, dressed now only in ragged underwear and with sore bare feet, one of them attaches herself to Anna and is subsequently referred to as 'limpet.' Although Anna keeps in constant touch with her new husband, she immediately becomes caught up in discovering why the girls have gone missing and where they've been.

Increasing evil becomes apparent in the park when small bodies of animals are found, tortured while still alive and brutally killed. There are, of course, a number of suspects, and not least among them is the charismatic leader of the youth group from which the girls were taken. When Anna eventually uncovers both the murderer and the missing girl, she almost forfeits her life doing it.

Nevada Barr skillfully uses the beautiful surroundings of the Rockies as a compliment to the gruesome events that take place there. Her descriptions of the park and its wildlife effectively seem to make the torture, murder, and attempted murders all the more horrible in such a lovely setting. The stupidity of sheep-like followers of a religion which demands absolute obedience to its leader lends additional grist to a mill already full of disgusting, unpleasant circumstances. Three cheers for Nevada Barr – she's done it again!

Alan Paul Curtis

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