for fictional detectives to share the same career path as their creators; mystery novels and short stories abound with mystery-writing sleuths, lawyers, and journalists. It is a little more uncommon to share a calling as a park ranger, as Nevada Barr (1952– ) does with her series protagonist, Anna Pigeon.
Soon after receiving a master’s degree in drama, Barr worked as an actress in New York and Minneapolis, appearing in off-Broadway plays, movies, television, commercials, and radio voice-overs. When her first husband, a director, became interested in environmental issues, she began working as a park ranger during the summer, and then full-time, until she became a bestselling author and devoted all her time to writing books.
The tough-talking Pigeon is a hard-working law enforcement park ranger with the United States National Park Service in nineteen novels, beginning with Track of the Cat (1993), which won both the Agatha and Anthony Awards as the best first novel of the year. Barr got the idea for the plot while walking through the woods and thinking of the many ways a person could die—and the people she believed would be better off dead. Since then, she (and Pigeon) have been regulars on the bestseller list. Curiously, Pigeon’s adventures have been set in a different national park in every book as she solves mysteries in the wilderness and historic locales, generally involving natural resources.
“Beneath the Lilacs” was originally published in Women on the Case, edited by Sara Paretsky (New York, Delacorte, 1996).