Nevada Barr

While diving at her new station near Lake Superior, Park Ranger Anna Pigeon discovers evidence of a grisly murder connected to an old sunken cargo ship.

A Superior Death

Sarah Sammis

A Superior Death by Nevada Barr is the second in her Anna Pigeon series. Anna has transferred reluctantly from Texas to Lake Superior where it is too cold and too wet for her tastes but she's making her best effort to make a new life for herself as a ranger here along the "frigid waters." Just as she's still learning the different cliques in and around the islands that make up the park, one of the locals is found buried in a historical captain's uniform in a 1927 wreck at the bottom of the lake.

I was reading A Superior Death at the same time as two other shipwreck stories, The Gulls of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Tres Seymour (about the most famous sunk ship in Lake Superior) and Treasure by Clive Cussler. When taken with The Ghost of Lizard Light by Elmira Woodruff, it was a month full of shipwrecks and deaths at sea.

When I started A Superior Death I was doubtful that the story would pull me in as much as Track of the Cathad with its strong descriptions of the Texas landscape. I shouldn't have worried. Barr's depiction of Lake Superior's environment above and below the surface chilled me to the bone.

Barr populates A Superior Death with a cast of interesting characters who are well enough realized that their quirks seem believable. As with Track of the Cat, the mystery was complex enough to keep me guessing until the end.

I have Ill Wind, the third in the series on my shelf and will be reading it soon.

A Superior Death

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