Destroyer Angel - Nevada Barr
Four years have mellowed Heath Jarrod, onetime ice climber turned paraplegic by a tragic fall. Some of that mellowing is definitely due to the influence of her adopted daughter, Elizabeth, whose presence in her life is a gift from Anna Pigeon. So it’s not unexpected that those two women and the fifteen-year-old would take a week for a long canoe trip off the grid in Minnesota. They’re joined by wealthy wunderkind engineer Leah Hendricks and her adolescent daughter, Katie. The first night in camp Anna heads for the river for some private time with her canoe, but when she returns, her companions are not alone: four men have invaded the campsite, and mayhem is on the menu.
The four thugs are there to kidnap Leah and her daughter, intending to deliver them to an airstrip some ten miles away through the North Woods. The belief that Heath and Elizabeth can command a handsome ransom too means that they will come along; the trek complicated by the thugs’ lack of wilderness savvy and Heath’s condition… not to mention Anna. Informed that the fifth camper backed out at the last minute, the four men remain unaware that one small, middle-aged female Park Ranger is plotting their demise.
Armed only with her wits and assisted only by a medium-sized dog with one broken leg, Anna Pigeon will have to outwit and outlast four armed men. If it were anyone other than Anna, her friends might as well give up – but this is where Anna Pigeon shines.
If you’ve seen Die Hard, Air Force One, Olympus Has Fallen or any of a host of other cinematic thrillers, you already know what’s going to happen. Even though Anna Pigeon isn’t Bruce Willis or Gerard Butler, you know that the tough little redhead is going to pick off the bad guys one by one, leaving the nastiest for last – and he’ll prove tougher to put down than any of the others. That goes without saying.
In the hands of a lesser author, Destroyer Angel would be just another thriller like hundreds of others, with an indestructible protagonist whose Special Forces training means he can kill a man with one blade of grass and three half-melted snowflakes, and Macgyver a helicopter out of empty Spam cans and a roll of adhesive tape. Hell, Anna doesn’t even have her Swiss Army knife…
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This is Nevada Barr, however, and she’s an author who doesn’t fall back on hackneyed plot devices even if her plot could be considered a bit hackneyed. You’re there next to Anna Pigeon at her every step, and Barr fills in the rest of the story from the viewpoint of Heath (whom Pigeonistas met first in 2005's Hard Truth). Anna Pigeon is not the only tough and resourceful woman on this trek…
In fact, every one of those five females proves tough and resourceful – but the only male who comes off looking positive is Wiley, Heath’s helper dog (and he isn’t completely male, if you know what I mean…). This is gurrrrrl power, though, right down to the final plot twist. You can forgive Nevada Barr for writing plot 7-A/3.1 from the big book of plots, because she did a damned fine job of it.
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