Hard Truth - Softcover

Nevada Barr

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1594131252 ISBN 13: 9781594131257

Publisher: Large Print Press, 2006

Synopsis

A New York Times Bestseller

Just three days after her wedding to Sheriff Paul Davidson, Anna Pigeon moves from Mississippi to Colorado to assume her new post as district ranger at Rocky Mountain National Park, where three young girls have disappeared during a religious retreat. Two of the children emerge a month later, clad only in filthy underwear and claiming to remember nothing of the intervening weeks. With the reappearance of the children comes an odd and unsettling presence in the park, a sense of disembodied evil and unspeakable terror. As Anna investigates, she finds herself caught up in the machinations of a paranoid religious sect determined to keep their secrets and the girls sequestered from law enforcement and psychiatric help. Following the trails of the many suspects, Anna discovers the force which has destroyed the children's minds. Here in the park, evil has the eyes of a visionary and the soul of the devil. Anna will discover the truth - even if it kills her.

Barr's first novel, Track of the Cat, was awarded both the Anthony Award for Best First Novel by the Crime Writers Association and the Agatha Award for Best First Novel by Malice Domestic. She then followed up with eight more novels set in various National Parks, including Firestorm which was awarded the France's Prix du Roman d'Adventure and nominated for the Anthony Award for Best Novel. Nevada Barr lives in Clinton, Mississippi.

About this title

Review

Ranger Anna Pigeon, Nevada Barr's series heroine (High Country, Flashback), meets her match in this engrossing new thriller set in Rocky Mountain National Park. Heath Jarrod is a climber now confined to a wheelchair after an accident that left her crippled, angry and depressed: "For a few months after the fall, she'd played Christopher Reeve, pretending to be as optimistic, as cheerful, but she was a lousy actor and ... she'd rung down the curtain. The first of many curtains." But there's a second act in her future that begins when two terrified, half-naked little girls stumble out of the woods and into Heath's "handicamp"--they've been missing for weeks, but are too traumatized to tell Heath and then Anna where they've been, or what happened to the third girl who disappeared with them. Beth, the younger, wins Heath's heart; with Anna, she pursues an investigation that leads to a bizarre, quasi-religious cult that's set up its headquarters just outside the park's boundaries, and the youth group leader who'd taken the girls into the wilderness and returned without them. Is Robert Proffit the gentle, spiritual man Anna's seasonal law enforcement agent Rita Perry thinks he is, or a twisted rapist and probable killer whose prayers for the innocent girls in his charge mask his evil nature?

The mysteries keep piling on, as one gruesome discovery leads to another, and Heath begins to realize that even though she's lost the use of her legs, the same tenacity that made her one of the world's leading mountaineers has even more rewarding summits to achieve. Barr builds the suspense skillfully and drives the narrative to a bloody, violent, and unexpected conclusion in one of her best mysteries to date. --Jane Adams

About the Author

Nevada Barr is the award-winning author of thirteen previous Anna Pigeon mysteries, including the New York Times bestsellers Hard Truth and High Country. She lives in New Orleans.

About this edition

• Publisher: Large Print Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1594131252
• ISBN 13: 9781594131257
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 556