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Flashback

by Nevada Barr

Here's a mystery that doesn't revolve around a murder - or murders, although murder certainly has a prominent place. Flashback is a story laid in the Dry Tortugas National Park, although why it's called 'Dry' remains the biggest mystery to me, since it's located out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, seventy miles from Key West, Florida. Nevada Barr has brought her series heroine, Anna Pigeon, here to the Pentagon-shaped old Fort Jefferson on Garden Key. The old fort, built in 1846, is not a figment of Ms. Barr's fertile imagination, but a very real and historic place. It takes up the entire tiny island of about thirteen acres.

Flashback provides us with two ongoing and exciting stories - one in the present, and one in the past, when Fort Jefferson was first being completed. The tale of past incidents is supplied by Anna's reading of old letters, sent to Anna as one way to help her mitigate the loneliness and isolation she's experiencing away from Paul, her lover. The letters are those from a long-dead relative - a woman who once inhabited Fort Jefferson along with her husband, sister, confederate military prisoners from the civil war, and several hundred union soldiers.

This tale from the past recounts the brutality and rougher-than-necessary treatment of prisoners by the soldier in charge - Sergeant Sinapp. The woman's husband is Captain Joseph Coleman, head of the entire fort, and the eventual turnabout of power from the Captain to Sinapp, as well as the reason behind it, is only a small portion of that story. The helplessness and impotence of women in general during that historical time period is highlighted. The Captain's wife, whose name was Raffia, is expected to take care of her young sister, Tilly - who in turn has fallen in love with a young, handsome confederate prisoner. Sergeant Sinapp not only tortures the prisoner, but consistently attempts to rape Tilly. Only the Captain's own affection for Tilly, plus his orders to the Sergeant are able to hold him back. Then the arrival of two men, supposedly friends of John Wilkes Booth, complicate matters. Shortly after this, Sergeant Sinapp seems to have gained control of the entire fort and the Captain is left to oversee in name only. Tilly and the young Johnny Rebel suddenly disappear along with a boat. The end result described in the final letter reveals hidden feelings, the innocence of suspects, and outright murder.

The past is inextricably woven into the present when Anna begins to see the ghost of her great-great-grandmother's sister, Raffia. Then when she's almost killed in a dive, searching for clues to a boat which exploded, she begins to fear for her own safety. She suspects smuggling, but doesn't know how, who, or why - or even what. Another boat has taken over whatever the sunken wreck's original purpose was. She discovers the reason behind her visions of a ghost, as well as her own other irrational behavior - and informs the former top occupant of the fort. That same individual, whose place she's temporarily taken, was transferred to a psychiatric hospital due to identical irrational behavior. In perfect tandem with her great-great aunt's last letters, Anna unearths the type of smuggling, witnesses several cold-blooded murders, learns of the disparity between two factions involved (one including a member of her own team at the fort), and manages to overcome huge odds in subduing the bad guys with the help of two husky lesbians.

Leave it to Nevada Barr to choose a site for her latest mystery book that only the southern states would easily recognize. Most Northerners, including myself, would never have heard of Fort Jefferson or the Dry Tortugas National Park before. Nevada Barr, following the tried, true, and admittedly most effective method of writing, sticks to writing about what she knows best, then adding to that with additional facts gleaned from her research. In
Flashback, this method gives us her usual excellent results, with a story so real and so compelling that you can't help but feel a part of it. Flashback isn't your usual murder mystery, but that doesn't prevent it from being a page turner.

Alan Paul Curtis

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