Get your Snakebite here!

Minette Walters has a thing about persecution. It’s not big-scale organized prejudiced thuggery so much that interests her, but the petty scapegoating, by random crowds, of whoever’s handiest and most vulnerable. In The Ice House, three women are outsiders in their home town because it’s assumed they are lesbians; in The Sculptress, the central character is ostracized because she’s socially awkward and overweight.

Walters has an uncomfortably keen insight into this particular form of human ugliness, but she offsets it with a compassion for her characters that I really like. In both of the aforementioned books, this balance is lace-delicate and an admirable achievement, but it is in The Shape of Snakes that shows her mastery of this tricky subject matter. The Shape of Snakes is the story of Mrs. Ranleigh, former teacher, mother of two, newly returned to England with her family after decades abroad. She spent those years in places like Hong Kong and Capetown, raising her boys and quietly rebuilding her marriage, which had been all but demolished by the death of a woman from her old London neighborhood, Mad Annie Butts.

As prospective friends for a nice teacher type go, Annie might seem a bit of a hard sell: she was black, a heavy drinker, verbally abusive, and had various symptoms of Tourette’s Syndrome that made her an object of mockery to the neighborhood children and their parents. But when Annie died in her arms one rainy evening, the apparent victim of a hit and run accident, Mrs. Ranleigh devoted herself to proving that the death was in fact a homicide. She insisted that one of the neighbors was responsible… and when she did, they turned on her. In the end the local police piled on too… as did, finally and unforgivably, her mother and husband.

Now, twenty years later, she’s back in England and in dogged pursuit of justice for Annie and for herself.

The appeal of The Shape of Snakes is twofold. First, it is the ultimate revenge fantasy for anyone who was ever bullied, the story of a bunch of mean kids getting serious comeuppance from their victim. Walters has created a heroine who is ordinary, determined, smart… and who never forgets a slight.

The other deeply fun thing about this book is watching the main character entrap her enemies. She is entirely non-violent… and utterly ruthless. She’s the nerdly person’s Dirty Harry; she’s the Terminator of psychological warfare. This woman dissects her former neighbors’ lives, bit by bit, digging up painful memories and bits of dirt, then using those old wounds to slice ever closer to the one truth she cares about, the thing she still doesn’t know: who killed Annie Butts? She lies, she manipulates, she blackmails them all–even her family–in her long-delayed crusade to answer this question.

As she does so, an even more interesting mystery emerges. What initially drove this crusade for justice: was it really just loyalty to a friendship that hadn’t properly gotten started?

Need more? Okay, here’s one final thing: The Shape of Snakes has one of the best closing lines of any book I’ve read, one that’s up there with the last lines of Connie Willis’s outstanding first novel Lincoln’s Dreams and The Closer by Donn Cortez.

Alyx Dellamonica lives in Vancouver, B.C. and makes her living writing science fiction and fantasy. Her first novel, Indigo Springs was released in 2009 to rave reviews. She also reviews books and teaches writing online at the UCLA Extension Writers' Program.

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6 Responses to “Get your Snakebite here!”

1. kormantic says:

   Sep 20, 2010 at 9:21 am

   It sounds depressingly intriguing – or maybe intriguingly depressing?

   Reply
   • Alyx Dellamonica says:

     Sep 20, 2010 at 10:28 am

     There’s definitely some roadkill factor, but I find the end very uplifting somehow.

     Reply
2. e mari says:

   Sep 20, 2010 at 9:51 am

   Love Minette Walters, loved this book, love this review. Thanks A, it’s nice to be reminded of great reads.

   Reply
   • Alyx Dellamonica says:

     Sep 20, 2010 at 10:30 am

     I keep coming back to this book… it is as close to perfect, for the current incarnation of me, as any mystery gets.

     Reply
3. kelly says:

   Sep 20, 2010 at 10:57 am

   I need to forget everything you ever told me about it, and put it on my reading pile.

   Reply
   • Alyx Dellamonica says:

     Sep 20, 2010 at 11:19 am

     Oop. Well, we will have it forever so you have lots of time to forget.

     Reply