Hunting Season, by Nevada Barr (on CD)

I had read this book, and so came into the recording aware that one of the main characters is Bad, but I couldn't remember exactly how it all played out, or the reasoning behind most of the weirdness.

Basically, Anna has started to settle in to life on the Natchez Trace in Mississippi. She has a boyfriend, she has at least one employee she can generally count on, and she's finding her way around the Deep South.

She is called to the scene of a crime, inside one of the historical buildings the Park oversees. There is a dead man on the bed. He has been stripped to his underwear and there are signs of him being strapped up with belts.

Meanwhile, she is also bothered by signs that someone has been poaching deer off Park Service land. When she investigates that one night, she comes upon a group of good ol' boys who turn on her in the darkness and start giving chase. Luckily, one of the other rangers arrives just in time to scare the men away before they can harm her.

Then her car gets rammed and, although Anna manages to get out of the car before she is hurt, the vehicle is totalled by pushing it--at full speed--into a bridge pylon while she watches, hidden in the darkness at the side of the road.

As scary as all of Barr's books, this one is not one of my favorites. On the other hand, it's one of her best-written stories. It was enjoyable to hear Barbara Rosenblat reading it aloud. She is very good at characterization.