In the Rockies, creepy terrain

Michael CONNELLY’s Det. Harry Bosch has Los Angeles; Tony Hillerman’s Sgt. Jim Chee and retired Lt. Joe Leaphorn have the more expansive Southwest. Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon has as her beat the entire National Park Service -- nearly 400 parks in every state of the Union and most U.S. territories. Anna’s career as a ranger and de facto law enforcement officer has taken her to the Carlsbad Caverns, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, as well as Yosemite and its Ahwahnee Hotel.

“Hard Truth,” Barr’s 13th novel in the series, is set in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park, where Anna has arrived to be district ranger. Having come from Mississippi’s Natchez Trace Parkway just three days after marrying her longtime beau, minister and Claiborne County Sheriff Paul Davidson, Anna’s initial mission is to calm her staff members, whose nerves have been frayed by a monthlong search for three missing girl campers. Anna knows they have “the weight of three lifetimes of unfinished business to carry on their shoulders.”

So when Heath Jarrod, a paraplegic ex-climber camping with her aunt at Sprague Lake, happens upon a pair of muck-encrusted, half-naked girls, one a tall and willowy teen, the other a limpet-like child “with the promise of womanly beauty beneath the skin of a baby,” Anna thinks the ordeal may soon be over. Indeed, at the hospital they are confirmed to be Alexis Sheppard, 13, and Beth Dwayne, 12, both from New Canaan, an isolated Mormon community near Loveland. But the third girl, Candace Watson, is nowhere to be found, and the explanation her companions give raises more questions than it answers.

Despite her marriage to a minister, Anna is a religious skeptic whose antennae start quivering when mention of going home seems to increase the severely traumatized girls’ anxiety. She also learns that the girls’ parents didn’t help in the search but rather prayed around the clock for the girls’ safe return. The only one who assisted the rangers was Robert Proffit, a handsome young Christian youth group leader who developed pneumonia while searching for the trio. Was his dedication merely a ruse, Anna wonders, to cover his complicity in their disappearance? And what of his bond with Rita, a young seasonal ranger who seems to share his religious fervor? Most disturbing, though, are Beth’s and Alexis’ parents, who not only absented themselves during the search but also refused to let the girls be tested for rape or speak with a psychologist after their ordeal. Is their lack of cooperation symptomatic of the breakaway Mormon sect’s deep distrust of the government or are they trying to deflect attention from more sinister doings at New Canaan?

Anna’s questions bring her to the compound, which is led by a strange and domineering religious zealot, and to some even stranger goings-on in the park. Anna forms an uneasy alliance with Heath, whose bitterness over her recent climbing accident initially makes her standoffish but who is stirred by the girls’ plight. In Heath, Barr has created one of the most fully realized characters in any of her novels, a woman as complex as Anna and whose struggles to accept her condition are as riveting as Anna’s quest to learn what happened to Beth, Alexis and the still-missing Candace.

Barr’s skill at balancing Anna’s and Heath’s character development makes “Hard Truth” a standout in the series. Moreover, her vivid descriptions of Rocky Mountain National Park are filtered through able-bodied Anna, her hikes and mishaps, as well as Heath and her wheelchair-aided travels over the same terrain. Even when the unmasking of the villain strains credulity, the manner in which Barr takes Anna and Heath on the killer’s dark journey is believable, even if too horrible to contemplate. That readers are compelled to follow is a testament to the strength of this novel and Barr’s command of her ever-expanding terrain. *