Nevada Barr's 13 1/2
Anna Pigeon's Creator Breaks New Ground With Psychological Thriller
Sep 27, 2009
Authors who break away from writing a popular series to create an unrelated work have to believe that the reward to be gained is worth the risk they take. Their risk is the possibility of alienating their readers who have shown that they know what they like and that they want more of it.
Their reward is the opportunity to expand creatively, to prove to themselves and their audiences that they have resources beyond those expected of them. Nevada Barr takes just such a risk with 13 ½, a standalone psychological thriller that interrupts her critically acclaimed Anna Pigeon detective series.
Plot Summary
Set in post-Katrina New Orleans, 13 ½ features two characters with pasts they want to forget. Polly Farmer, a divorced English professor with two young daughters and Marshall Marchand, an architect helping to restore the devastated city, meet and are instantly attracted to each other. The attraction quickly leads to marriage, but their hopes of living happily ever after are soon threatened by their personal histories.
Polly’s Past
Polly has achieved the success that a tarot card reader promised her when she, a 15-year-old runaway from an abusive home, first arrived in New Orleans. Polly did suffer the failure of her first marriage, but she considers that loss to be offset by the gift of her two adored daughters.
Marshall’s Past
Marshall is actually the notorious “Butcher Boy” Dylan Raines who, at age eleven, was convicted of killing his mother, his father and his baby sister. Only Dylan’s older brother, Richard, survived the massacre.
Dylan, who could not recall committing the crime, was sentenced to remain in a juvenile detention center until he became old enough to enter the state prison. A teacher there helps to get Dylan released when he is eighteen. Dylan and his brother Richard then move to New Orleans where Richard – now known as Danny Marchand –- acquires a chain of drugstores and where Dylan – now called Marshall – studies architecture.
Past and Present Collide
So it is Marshall Marchand, successful architect, rather than “Butcher Boy” Dylan Raines, that Polly Farmer meets and marries. But soon after the wedding another tarot card reader warns Polly against her husband, telling her that she is destined to kill him. After learning of this prophecy, Marshall begins to fear that he might indeed harm his new family, just as he has been told he had done with his parents.
Events reach a climax when Polly finds a box containing documents written by her husband that include his comments on a number of infamous serial killers. She realizes then that “in what seemed like a moment . . . the delightful life of a middle-aged English professor, in love for the first time, had become the stuff of B movies.”
Barr’s Risk
Clearly Nevada Barr has taken a risk in departing from her Anna Pigeon series to write a book that delves into the actions of serial killers. It is unlikely, though, that she will lose any of her Anna Pigeon fans as a result of the change.
Although Barr has dramatically changed her subject matter in13 ½, readers of her Anna Pigeon series will recognize the similarity in themes between this new novel and Barr’s previous works. A National Park Service ranger, Anna Pigeon constantly confronts violence both from man and nature.
In 13 ½ Barr continues this focus on the external violence of nature and the internal violence of mankind. Few cities could be more emblematic of nature’s brutality than New Orleans, which she selects as her novel's setting.
But human evil far outweighs any that could be wrought by nature in 13 ½. Barr surrounds the story of the murder of Dylan’s family with additional accounts of real life crime that depict "children killing children, children killing parents or neighbors, wives killing husbands, mothers killing their babies, brothers killing sisters, Bundy and Speck and Gacy and Dahmer killing everybody.”
Barr indeed proves in 13 ½ that she has the versatility and talent needed to go beyond the limits imposed by her series. The thematic similarity to her Anna Pigeon books should continue to attract past readers, just as her radical switch from the detective genre to that of the thriller will gain new ones.
Publication Details: Barr, Nevada. 13 ½. Vanguard Press. Sept. 29, 2009. ISBN: 978-1-59315-553-7
For More Information:
- When Good Writers Get Bored: What Mystery Authors Write After Publishing a Successful Series
- Nevada Barr's Borderline: National Park is Setting for Tale of Guilt, Redemption and Politics
Cover of 13 1/2
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