13 1/2

Nevada Barr is a favorite mystery writer of mine, and her National Parks series featuring Park Ranger Anna Pigeon are detective stories with mini-travelogues thrown in for good measure. I like Anna's adventures. Barr's new novel is not part of the series: it's a fast-paced, rather grim look at a sociopathic killer and the people affected by this monster. It is more dark and disturbing than the Anna Pigeon series--more Thomas Harris than Nevada Barr--so anyone who has a problem with intense, R-rated subject matter should be forewarned. That said, I was fascinated by this stand-alone story. The three main characters are certainly unusual, and the setting (post-Katrina New Orleans) is vivid. I read "13 1/2" in two long sittings, and, even though I pretty much figured out the big plot twists before the heroine did, I was arrested by Barr's provocative writing style. She sets a definite mood of dark, sinister menace, and several sequences in the story reminded me of my favorite moments in Hitchcock films. No artist is content to be a one-trick pony, doing the same thing over and over forever. Nevada Barr is trying something new here, and her true fans will gladly take this offbeat journey with her. I'm sure Anna Pigeon will be back soon. In the meantime, try this creepy, edgy journey into darkness. Highly recommended. (P.S.--Nevada Barr is featured in the new PBS documentary series Ken Burns: National Parks - America's Best Idea. If you haven't seen this excellent show, you really should.)

Many people may be drawn in just by the title of Nevada Barr's first stand alone novel, 13½--which is described as "One judge, twelve jurors and a half a chance." It's a curious hint of what is to come, but gives nothing away. Polly Farmer, professor of literature and divorced mother of two young children, started her life in the French Quarter of New Orleans as a 15 year old run-a-way. She left home to try and save herself by escaping the trailer park life and a drunken mother's string of men and sexual abuses. In alternating chapters, another young person, a boy, is suffering the abuses of a corrupt juvenile detention center after having been committed there upon his conviction of the horrific murders of his mother, father and little sister--even the poor kitty! Dubbed "Butcher Boy" by the media, only one older brother barely survives the attack on the rest of the family. In New Orleans, these two shattered lives will collide as the reader is slowly drawn in by the children.s' pasts, the vivid scenery of post Hurricane Katrina, a mysterious Lady-in-Red fortune teller and a fairy tale romance. In a book that will keep you guessing to the end, Barr has departed from her previous award winning "Anna Pigeon: Park Ranger" series of books. When asked about the obstacles presented when switching from an acclaimed series with numerous followers to a psychological stand-alone thriller, Barr replies, "...There are always obstacles in writing any novel but, more, I think when one is breaking out of a long-running series to do a stand-alone. At least there was for me. One, of course, was the concern my readers would be disappointed when they picked 13½ up and found it wasn't an Anna Pigeon..." This book will not disappoint you; instead, it becomes a wake-up call about the abuses of young children and the systems they sometimes are forced to endure. With her intense descriptions of place and pulse tingling suspense, I would rather lose a night's sleep than not finish turning the pages. by Rhonda Esakov for Story Circle Book Reviews reviewing books by, for, and about women

Even without my favorite park ranger, Anna Pigeon, Barr's new book capivated me. The style had me hooked right up to the end, which I rushed to get to. Barr's story lines can stand alone, but she takes you to the locale of the tale -- this time post-Katrina New Orleans. I love "visiting" places I've been before with her characters. The essays kept me guessing and the storied tied up in a believable, but not predictable ending. I'll be reading it again soon! p.s. Reading mysteries on the Kindle is so great! I highlight, bookmark and annotate my way through the book to see if I can figure out who done it. On the Kindle it's so easy to pull my notes back up and compare.

I am holding Nevada Barr responsible: since picking up her newest novel, 13 ½, I have been losing sleep. Until the very last page had been read, sleep continued to evade me. In all my lifelong voracious reading habits, I continue to find that writers can generally be classified in one of two groups: fine literary writers or terrific storytellers. Because the skill set and high level of artistry required is quite different for each group, rarely do the two groups meet and mesh. But Nevada Barr stands neatly balanced, with one foot inside each of these two groups. She is a fine writer, with literary finesse, and she is one heck of a storyteller. Barr kept me awake with her storytelling, but not before messing with my head a bit, along with my sleep patterns. When I first opened the cover of 13 ½, I was thrown into a horrific scene of sexual molestation. Polly, a girl not yet nine years old, is being raped by her mother's whiskey-chugging boyfriend. Rather than protect and defend her daughter, Polly's alcoholic mother gets jealous and angry with her. Too frequently, this scenario is all too real. Victims become victimizers, and Polly's mother, her own self-esteem nonexistent, allows her daughter to become victimized. At such a very tender age, this child understands the male psyche far beyond what she should: "Though Polly's birthday wasn't for a couple weeks, she already knew what it meant when men's eyes went gooey and nasty." The message of this scene, however, is not so much victimization as survival skills. Polly grows up to be a smart woman, one who has fortunately been strong enough to break the cycle of abuse and instead is a loving and protective mother of her own children. Stage left, enter another main character: Butcher Boy. This child, Dylan, wakes into a family massacre, his parents murdered with an axe, his baby sister dead, his older brother badly wounded. He alone is whole, however dazed. Eleven years old, he is dragged to court and prosecuted for the vicious murder of his family. The boy hardly seems able to function as his mind and emotions shut down under the weight of something so immense, so incomprehensible. Only his surviving brother stands by him. Barr does a wonderful job of describing a juvenile justice system that is highly dysfunctional. Children who end up in juvenile delinquent homes, more often than not already coming from abusive homes, are often subjected to more abuse by the very staff who is supposed to help them rehabilitate. Reality, alas, matches fiction, and Barr has shone an important spotlight on a growing problem in our society. Dylan is thrown away, with no one caring enough to deal with his problems, and he spends years in a world where guards beat and rape little boys, psychologists and social workers conduct unethical experiments on their young prey, and wardens look the other way. The only person left who seems to care that Dylan is even alive is his brother Rich. Back and forth. The novel

1970: On a rain-swept highway outside Prentiss, Mississippi, 15-year-old Polly Deschamps reaches a crossroads that will change her miserable life. She abandons her mother's car on the side of the highway, trusting the police to find and return it, recounts the $11 she stole from her mother's drunken boyfriend, steps onto the shoulder of the highway, and sticks out her thumb. Will it be Jackson or New Orleans? The trucker who pulls over tells her he's headed for Bourbon Street, which is "no place for a young white girl," so he lets her out in Jackson Square. The tarot card reader is the only woman, except for the hookers, who is visible in the darkened park, so she seats herself at the gypsy's table, and Polly's fate is sealed. Fifteen hundred miles away, a young boy named Dylan has just been sentenced to the psychiatric facility in a juvenile detention center in Du Walt, Minnesota for taking an axe to his parents, his baby sister and the family cat. Only his brother, Richard, survived the bloodbath, and Dylan, dubbed "Butcher Boy" by the title-hungry media, sets foot on his own journey to an uncertain future as his fate is sealed as well. Now cut to 2007: Dr. Polly Deschamps, ever hungry for knowledge and eager to lift herself out of the squalid poverty of her childhood, has worked hard, earned her way through high school and university, and is now a tenured and respected English professor at a local New Orleans college. Recently divorced with two young daughters, her social life is restricted to fellow educators until she meets Marshall Marchand, a dashing, successful architect whose company has landed a major contract to help reconstruct New Orleans following the Katrina disaster. When Marshall and Polly first meet in Jackson Square, still her favorite haunt, he is smitten for the first time in his life. He has spent his adult years working at what he loves --- designing buildings and collecting art --- but he had not allowed himself time for a serious relationship. He and his brother, Danny, a successful owner of a chain of boutique drugstores, live in a condominium in the craftsman neighborhood of New Orleans, and the successful bachelors lead a genteel and quiet but stylish social life. Polly's appearance in Marshall's life is as alarming to Danny as it is alluring to Marshall, and Danny cautions his brother to take it slowly. Their romance leads the two lonely people on a path of horrifying discoveries that set the stage for a thriller of Shirley Jackson proportions. Nevada Barr, who has 10 bestselling mysteries under her belt, may be familiar to readers as the creator of U.S. National Park Ranger Anna Pigeon, solver of murders in exotic wilderness settings. No stranger to building suspense and creating page-turning chase scenes with spine-chilling climaxes, Barr has broken out of the series mold with this new cast of characters. Additionally, 13 ½ goes much further as a psychological thriller than Anna Pigeon novels, as Barr delves dee