Ranger Anna Pigeon has a new post amid the cold, deserted, and isolated beauty of Isle Royale National Park, a remote island off the coast of Michigan known for fantastic deep-water dives of wrecked sailing vessels.
Leaving behind memories of the Texas high desert and the environmental scam she helped uncover, Anna is adjusting to the cool damp of Lake Superior and the spirits and lore of the northern Midwest.
But when a routine application for a diving permit reveals a grisly underwater murder, Anna finds herself 260 feet below the forbidding surface of the lake, searching for the connection between a drowned man and an age-old cargo ship.

A Superior Death‘ (1995) is the second book about Park Ranger Anna Pigeon. She’s moved from the Texas desert where I met her in ‘Track Of The Cat‘ and is now working in the Isle Royale National Park where she spends most of her time on or in Lake Superior. She’s had to master how to navigate using only radar and how to dive into the deep dark lightless water where the shipwrecks with protected status rest.

Nevada Barr’s storytelling is confident and engaging. She makes the story accessible without being overly simple. She keeps Anna at the centre of the story, not as a plot device but as a person. Almost every scene is written to reveal as much about Anna Pigeon’s character as about place she’s in or the mystery she’s trying to solve. Anna is the main reason I read these books. I like her slightly outside the norm way of thinking. It’s also a nce change to read an introvert character who isn’t describerd as shy.

‘A Superior Death‘ started well, establishing Anna in her new environment and giving me a strong sense of what it would be like to be on the water all day and how scary it would be to have to dive so deep to reach a wreck that your thinking would be impaired at the same time when a single mistake might kill you. 

Unfortunately, while the book was strong on place and peoplee, it was weak on plot. I felt the book lost energy in the middle because too many things were going on with too many suspects. The pace picked up in the last third of book, accelerating to a tense, action-packed and surprising ending.

So, although ‘A Superior Death‘ didn’t quite live up to ‘Track Of The Cat‘, I still want to know what Anna does next. In January, I’ll be reading ‘Ill Wind‘, the fourth book in the series. It’s set in Mesa Verde, a National Park that I have fond memories of.