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Title: Flashback

Subtitle: An Anna Pigeon Mystery

Author: Nevada Barr

Narrator: Joyce Bean

Format: Abridged

Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-03-08

Publisher: Brilliance Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 16 votes

Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Modern Detective

Publisher's Summary:

Here, on this last lick of the United States, in a giant crumbling fortress, Anna has little company except for an occasional sunburned tourist or unruly shrimper. When her sister, Molly, sends her a packet of letters from her great-great-aunt, who lived at the fort with her husband, a career soldier, Anna's fantasy life is filled with visions of this long-ago time.

When a mysterious boat explosion - and the discovery of unidentifiable body parts - keeps her anchored to the present, Anna finds crimes of past and present closing in on her. A tangled web that was woven before she arrived begins to threaten her sanity and her life. Cut off from the mainland by miles of water, poor phone service, and sketchy radio contact, and aided by one law-enforcement ranger, Anna must find answers or weather a storm to rival the hurricanes for which the islands are famous.

Members Reviews:

Anna is in danger of unraveling

Anna Pigeon has committed to three months as temporary supervisory ranger job at Dry Tortugas National Park in Florida, on the Gulf of Mexico. The regular supervisor is in treatment. He went crazy when his girlfriend left him.

Weirdly, Anna starts feeling her own mind slipping, soon after she arrives. The Dry Tortugas, site of a Civil War Union prison camp, seems to harbor ghosts.

Flashback has a distinct literary flavor. The narrative alternates between the present day and the last days of the Civil War. The flashback story is told in letters written by Anna's great great aunt Raffia, whose husband was in charge of the prison fortress which Anna is now managing. The switching back and forth between centuries makes it possible for almost every chapter to end with a cliffhanger. In this book, Nevada Barr delivers shocks and thrills as regularly as a nineteenth-century sensation novel.

I was captivated by the roller coaster storytelling. Even though I knew rationally that Anna must survive for the sake of future books, the tight spots Barr contrives for her heroine had me in a sweat every time.

Anna does a lot of snooping in this book, a lot of soul searching, and a fair amount of diving. She shoots and is shot at. Her equanimity in the presence of corpses and body parts is impressive. And in her way, great great aunt Raffia is as intrepid as Anna.

So this is quite an original book, rich in tragedy, comedy and action. An excellent addition to a fun series.

Great Story Line

I love all of the Barr books (the New Orleans one least of all, however - too much like another female writer who writes an awful lot about vampires in New Orleans. I DO love the ranger station in the quarter, however. They have the cleanest bathrooms for miles around). Flashback, however, has several things to recommend it: its set in Lassen Volcanic National Park, a place most people have not and never will visit; the research she did on being on the line and being caught by a flashback are is superb; she reintroduces a ranger she initially met at Mesa Verde, whose brother .... I'll stop I don't scene spoil. Needless to stay there is incredible irony in the book. She also meets Frederick the F.B.I. guy again. Romance, anyone?

Starting in the middle

I always read books in a series in order.