Burn: An Anna Pigeon Murder Mystery by Nevada Barr

Anna Pigeon is on leave from her job as a law enforcement ranger for the National Park Service in the U.S., to recuperate from physical and mental trauma from her previous two mis-adventures.

For rest and relaxation, Anna is staying for awhile with a friend, Geneva, who's a blind gospel singer and ranger in the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park. Of course she doesn't get her rest and relaxation!

Anna comes across a filthy, creepy character, Jordan, a gutter punk who is leasing an apartment from Geneva, and she starts to investigate his background. She's come to the conclusion that he's an unsavory character with perverted inclinations and needs to be exposed. There is more to Jordan than meets the eye though.

Image of New Orleans gutter punks by Editor B, CC. 2.0 license

During this time, we're also introduced to Clare from Seattle, who returns home in the middle of the night to find that her two young daughters are missing. Her husband and the nanny are also gone. Soon after the police come to investigate, her house explodes and burns. The firefighters eventually carry out three burned corpses -- one adult male, and two children.

Clare is charged with the murders, but she knows the house was empty when she had returned! She finds a few clues that suggest that maybe the two burned children were not her own, and that there is a connection to a brothel that involves children in New Orleans. To avoid getting caught, Clare dons a disguise, and makes her way to New Orleans. There her thread of the story is connected to Anna's thread. Anna helps Clare investigate what may have happened to her children, her husband, and the nanny.

Here we're introduced to a seamier side (and hopefully truly fictional side) of New Orleans, including the disturbing use of children ("jewels") in private brothels frequented by certain men of power, with perverted tastes, within the city.

I'm always uneasy when a story line includes the murder or abuse of children. There is always something "not right" or "kosher" about it in my mind, even if it is fiction. So this plot bothered me, although the novel is very well-written and it held my attention. Personally, I also thought the plot fell apart a little toward the end -- the well-woven story lines aren't resolved as neatly or as realistically as I had hoped. But still this is a very well-wrought novel for the most part, and a good addition to the Anna Pigeon series.

Photo of Bourbon Street in New Orleans, and released into the public domain.