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High Country puts Anna Pigeon at Yosemite, working undercover as a seasonal dining-hall employee to investigate the disappearance of four young park workers. The case turns out to involve a backcountry meth operation, and the back half of the book is one of the most physically demanding sequences Nevada Barr has written.
Barr's strength has always been the genuine outdoor competence of her protagonist, and Yosemite gives her the kind of landscape that the form rewards. The high country sections (the long approach to the meth camp, the descent under pursuit, the exhaustion management) are written with the precision of someone who has done the actual hiking.
Four stars. One of the most propulsive entries in the long series. Recommended even to readers who have not kept up with the full sequence.
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