What Rose Forgot
By Nevada Barr. (Minotaur, 304 pages, $28.99.)
In this stand-alone novel, Nevada Barr departs from her long-beleaguered heroine, park ranger Anna Pigeon, and introduces us to Rose Dennis, a resident of an Alzheimer's unit in Longwood, a senior care facility. To a certain demographic, this setting holds just as much frightfulness as Barr's 19 previous murder-mysteries. We meet Rose in mid-escape into some nearby woods, and in the overnight hours without medication, her mind clears enough to know that something is wrong, that this sudden diagnosis is suspect.
Once found and returned to Longwood, she slyly spits out her next doses and sets about trying to learn how why she's here. Barr seems inspired by her new protagonist, writing with particular style and savvy. She describes Rose waking up this way: "Out of a coil of snaking dreams an answer rises, floating into a window as small and dark as that of a Magic 8-Ball."
Barr has always worked in brief asides that draw a smile, as when Rose "cries for the dogs they raised, the cats they served." The plot itself explores the idea of a profit motive in hastening old people to their deaths. "What with the baby boomers beginning to lose their collective marbles, dementia care is a seller's market." The action is classic Barr. Family connections are delved — yes, there is a sister. A hit man pursuing Rose through a bedroom window and onto a rooftop ends up losing the tip of his finger. Yes, she will take a print from that digit to discover his identity. In short, Rose is every bit as feisty and fearless as Anna Pigeon — and ends up just about as badly mauled as Barr's usual foil. The ultimate villain is unexpected, and the larger scheme a chilling vision of how aging people can lose control over their lives. Will we see more of Rose? Fine by me.
KIM ODE
Kopp Sisters on the March By Amy Stewart. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 368 pages, $26.)
Loosely inspired by an actual crime fighter, the first four novels in Amy Stewart's Kopp sisters series straddled the mystery/historical novel line as feisty sheriff's deputy Constance Kopp struggled to make a name for herself in the male-dominated 1910s. But mystery has been dispensed with in the fifth, the brisk "On the March," with Constance and her sisters — crabby Norma and dreamy Fleurette — enrolling in one of the National Service Schools that prepared women for what World War I would require of them, on the home front or overseas.
America's entry in the war is still in the future as the book ends but what it lacks in action it makes up for in the cramped, all-in-this-together atmosphere of the camp. When one woman whips open her tent to introduce its martini-swilling residents with, "Girls, meet the girls," Kopp recalls the breezy fun of classic, female-centered movies such as "Stage Door."
CHRIS HEWITT
