The Rope

An Anna Pigeon Mystery, Book 17

By: Nevada Barr

Narrated by: Joyce Bean

Length: 12 hrs

Publisher's summary

Anna Pigeon has been a ranger with the National Park Service for many years, but she had a very different life before tragedy sent her west seeking something new. Now Nevada Barr finally tells the previously untold story of Anna’s first foray into the wild, and the case that helped shape her into the ranger she became.

Thirty-five years old, fresh off the bus from New York City, and nursing a shattered heart, Anna Pigeon takes a decidedly unglamorous job as a seasonal employee of the Glen Canyon National Recreational Area. On her day off, she goes hiking into the park never to return. Her co-workers think she’s simply moved on - her cabin is cleaned out and her things gone. Anna herself wakes up, trapped at the bottom of a dry natural well, naked, without supplies and no clear memory of how she got into this situation.

As she slowly pieces together her memory, it soon becomes clear that someone has trapped her there, in an inescapable prison, and that no one knows that she is even missing. Plunged into a landscape and a plot she is unfit and untrained to handle, Anna Pigeon must muster the courage, strength, and will to live that she didn’t even know she still possessed in order to survive, outwit, and triumph.

Investigate more mysterious doings with Anna Pigeon.

©2012 Nevada Barr (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Great to meet Anna Pigeon again

What made the experience of listening to The Rope the most enjoyable?

Telling how Anna came to be a ranger - events onlyh hinted at in the series

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Rope?

the rope event

What does Joyce Bean bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

----

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

no idea

Any additional comments?

enjoyable read

Not her best

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

No. It didn't really explain anything about Anna's beginnings as a ranger, and mostly depicted her as a victim. I felt like I was reading about someone entirely different from the Anna Pigeon I knew before.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

Maybe it should have been kept as seen from Anna's point of view, left out the other character perspectives, and done away with the victim attitude. Granted, there was a lot of trauma there which would have made the victim attitude believable, but it is fiction, and this just doesn't flow into Anna in later years. How Anna went from this insufferable beginning in the park service to the person she is in her other stories just doesn't seem feasible. Again, it's like there are two completely different characters.

What didn’t you like about Joyce Bean’s performance?

She was much too precise for me to picture her in the setting. I found myself wincing at each enunciated final consonant. Going from precision to character voices was just too much of a leap.

Good book

If you could sum up The Rope in three words, what would they be?

frightening

Any additional comments?

This is a good story. It is frightening because it is more realistic that than some of the Anna Pigeon, super hero, stories. It has a good mix of up and down rather than trying to sustain an emotional high.

Better than the previous book

This definitely provides background regarding why or how Anna became a park ranger in law enforcement. The story is so so at the beginning, but midway through pans out to a typical Anna Pigeon novel.

Excellent Read

A well written and suspenseful book to the very end. The characters were relatable. I enjoyed every minute.

Barr's Weakest Pigeon Read

What disappointed you about The Rope?

Wayyyyyyy too much about human excrement. A prequel to other Anna Pigeon books, Anna learns to love nature by being imprisoned naked in the desert. Sounds interesting? It's not, unless details of bodily functions are your thing.

Would you ever listen to anything by Nevada Barr again?

After this book, I'd be loath to listen to anything by Barr again. I DO recommend her earlier books and have bought, begged or borrowed all previous Anna Pigeon mysteries.

How could the performance have been better?

The performer did well with the material provided.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

After loving Nevada Barr books for years, I am sorry to report that this book didn't have any redeeming qualities. Save your pennies.

If you like simile after simile...

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

You will like the book. Minimal dialogue, excessive filler.

What was most disappointing about Nevada Barr’s story?

Even though this is an

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

The performance was good, just the material to work with.

Any additional comments?

Will listen to Blind Descent and Super Death again to get this out of my mind.

YUCK, YUCK

TO SICK FOR ME , LISTENED TO IT ALL, NOT A GOOD LISTEN, YOU MIGHT LIKE IT, TWISTS AND TURNS THROUGHOUT, NOT WORTH 2 LISTENS , HAVE DELETED IT.

Just Okay

What would have made The Rope better?

The book goes into a new life or death story before finding out who the villain was in the first story. Inconsistenciess in the story line.

What was most disappointing about Nevada Barr’s story?

I never did listen to the end. I got bored after the second life and death story. So unbelievable!

Did Joyce Bean do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

Yes, her narration was good with her different voices.

This book contains overt senseless cruelty

I am returning this book half listened to because I cannot bear to listen any longer. The story is at one level interesting and if I had borrowed a hard copy from the library, I probably would have read the last chapter or so before I returned it, so I knew what happened but this isn't an easy option for an audio-book. Anna Pigeon finds herself at the bottom of a 'solution hole' in the Colorado desert (?) with a dislocated shoulder, a bleeding bump on the back of her head and no memory of how she got there. As her memory returns we find out that she has been a witness to a gang rape and murder. She is actually imprisoned in the hole and the people who put her there provide drugged water and then return to carve "whore" into her thigh. The midget albino rattlesnake that lives under the house that she shared with another seasonal worker at a resort is found nailed behind its head and in front of its rattle and left to die in agony. In the meantime, she has been joined in the hole by an orphaned baby skunk whom she befriends and who helps her to find non-drugged water. I have no idea what happens next because at this point the descriptions of senseless violence and cruelty became just too much for me. If you have the stomach for this kind of thing, then you might enjoy the book which is quite suspenseful, but it is certainly not my thing. Maybe this is what you would expect from an Anna Pigeon mystery - I have never 'read' one before.