Very good Anna Pidgeon mystery about the death of a high school girl on the Natchez Trace as Anna just starts her new posting with the Natl Park Service.

Park ranger Anna Pigeon has been transferred again, this time in order to get a promotion, which are hard to come by in the park service. She’s being sent to the Natchez Trace in Mississippi, and as she drives all her worldly possessions down to her new park, she quickly feels like a fish out of water. But soon she discovers boys messing around in a graveyard after dark, a young high school girl left drunk and alone in a party dress, and soon after, the body of a second girl.

This mystery went in some interesting directions as Anna is forced to investigate despite uncooperative new colleagues at her new ranger station, good ol’ boy locals, and an unfortunate number of hungry alligators lurking about. I thought the investigation part was especially methodical this time and liked the way the new romance as well as conflicts with colleagues played into it at times. Bonus points for great scenes with her cat Piedmont and especially with dog, Taco.
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Synopsis: 'Though she loves her varied postings as a National Park Service ranger (Liberty Falling, 1999, etc.) and hates administration, Anna Pigeon’s not getting any younger or richer, so she puts in for promotion, and next thing she knows she’s driving hell-for-leather alongside Mississippi mud and alligators en route to her posting as district ranger of the Port Gibson District. The area is fabulously fertile (new weeds spring from dead trees before their last leaves have fallen), obsessed with the past (Anna stumbles on a group of Civil War reenactors soon after her arrival), and about to become the site of an ugly murder (a prom queen is found bashed to death draped in a sheet, her neck in a noose that can’t help reminding Anna of the KKK the locals assure her is long dormant). From Anna’s slyly insubordinate subordinates to a local sheriff who just happens to be an Episcopal priest, these folks walk and talk and break the law with authority,'
Review: I was very distressed when the dog got bitten by the alligator, and even more disturbed when Anna could not take care of him properly. The sheriff and priest seems to be Anna's latest romantic interest. Because Anna rides around in a car all the time, she's functioning more as a police person than a Park Ranger. ( )

Mississippi!

Anna has been promoted and her new job is to be a district ranger at the Rocky Springs part of Nachez Trace in rural Mississippi. The Trace follows an old path that was taken by Native Americans, soldiers, Europeans, and others in the early years of the United States. You can drive on the road or take to your feet and follow old foot paths. The Trace differs from most National parks and monuments in that it is a long narrow parkway that spans three states.

As in the other books in this series that I have read so far, Anna works as a ranger, a law enforcement position, and is something of a combination professional and amateur detective. Her habits take her to places where she happens to see things or overhear things that bear on the mystery.

The mystery in this case is who killed Danielle Posey, a teenage girl, on the night of the prom. Anna finds her body covered with a sheet with eyes cut out and with a noose over her neck.

A big question is, does the Ku Klux Klan costume have racial significance or is it a diversion?

With her usual tenacity, Anna joins local law enforcement in the form of Sheriff Paul Davidson to find the killer. Among the suspects is a trio of teens whom Anna had met running through the woods that night. The young woman had rubbed others the wrong way as well, and her father was even a possibility.

Similar to other Anna Pigeon mysteries, the reason for her death is found within the park itself.

We are again treated to word paintings of the Trace, including aspects visitors might never see or hear of. It is such a delight to get to know these National treasures in this way, even if I never get to see them all in person. ( )

It's been a long time since I read this book but I have read the entire series, up until the most current book and I really like it. I love how the series is set outdoors in the different parks. If you like C.J. Box, then you'll like Barr too. ( )