Please help me identify a deep-woods mystery novel.

August 14, 2007 12:53 PM

Please help me identify a deep-woods mystery novel.

There's a passage I'd love to read again, but I can't remember the book it's from. It was a mystery novel. I think I read it in the early or mid-90s.

The detective, a woman, is out in the woods with an expert tracker. The passage describes a technique the expert calls "tracking with the heart" -- recognizing discrepancies in your own heartbeat as the first signal that you've subliminally spotted something significant.

posted by tangerine to writing & language (6 comments total)

Smilla's Sense of Snow?
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 2:41 PM on August 14, 2007

The Loop, by Nicholas Evans?
posted by fshgrl at 5:23 PM on August 14, 2007

Way Of A Man (Wild River Trilogy) has woods, heartbeats and tracking in it.
posted by tellurian at 5:30 PM on August 14, 2007

Many thanks, everyone.

I know absolutely it isn't Smilla's Sense of Snow, because I've read it; and it really doesn't sound like either of the other two.

Someone emailed me to suggest that the author might be Dana Stabenow. I think that's plausible, though I still can't guess from the descriptions which book it might be.
posted by tangerine at 11:42 AM on August 15, 2007

Does the name Nevada Barr ring a bell? It might have been one of her books.
posted by lockedroomguy at 2:39 PM on August 15, 2007

That name sounds awfully familiar too.

If I don't get any farther, I guess I'll just have to email the two of them and ask "Did you write this?"
posted by tangerine at 5:29 PM on August 15, 2007