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The Shape of Snakes by Minette Walters — book cover

The Shape of Snakes

by Minette Walters
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Overview

A psychological thriller about race, family, and the brutal power of raw emotion.

Mrs. Ranelagh has never stopped thinking about the dead body she found in the gutter twenty years ago, during Britain’s Winter of Discontent. “Mad Annie,” as she was known, was the only black resident of her West London neighborhood and openly despised by the community. The police called her death an accident, but Mrs. Ranelagh has always suspected it was murder. However, her pleas for an investigation were met with a vicious hate campaign that drove her and her husband from the country. Now, determined to uncover the truth, Mrs. Ranelagh has returned to England, where she quickly discovers a sordid trail of domestic violence, racism and adultery that shockingly could lead back to her own family.

Synopsis

A psychological thriller about race, family, and the brutal power of raw emotion.

Mrs. Ranelagh has never stopped thinking about the dead body she found in the gutter twenty years ago, during Britain’s Winter of Discontent. “Mad Annie,” as she was known, was the only black resident of her West London neighborhood and openly despised by the community. The police called her death an accident, but Mrs. Ranelagh has always suspected it was murder. However, her pleas for an investigation were met with a vicious hate campaign that drove her and her husband from the country. Now, determined to uncover the truth, Mrs. Ranelagh has returned to England, where she quickly discovers a sordid trail of domestic violence, racism and adultery that shockingly could lead back to her own family.

Library Journal

An Edgar Award winner whose books are routinely best sellers, Walters has crafted an eerie tale. In 1978 London, with half the country on strike, a woman named Mad Annie dies in the street, unmourned by her scornful neighbors. Only the young Mrs. Ranelagh believes that it is really murder, and she spends 20 years trying to prove it. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

About the Author, Minette Walters

One of Britain's most popular crime novelists, Minette Walters has attracted as many fans in the U.S. as she has in the U.K. Ever since her first novel, The Ice House, received the esteemed British John Creasey Award for best first crime novel in 1992, Walters has continued to win awards and accolades for her dark thrillers.

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Editorials

From Barnes & Noble

It was the winter of discontent in Britain, and as the dead lay unburied and foul-smelling garbage collected in the streets, the death of a black woman known to her neighbors as "Mad Annie" was causing unprecedented commotion. The uproar was spearheaded by a woman named Mrs. Ranelagh, who had the misfortune of discovering Annie's body in the gutter. She claimed that Annie had died without speaking. She said that she'd never seen Annie before. Yet she was sure that Annie had been murdered. So why, some 20 long years later, is Mrs. Ranelagh still seeking the truth about a mad woman's murder -- unless her reasons are personal?

Library Journal

An Edgar Award winner whose books are routinely best sellers, Walters has crafted an eerie tale. In 1978 London, with half the country on strike, a woman named Mad Annie dies in the street, unmourned by her scornful neighbors. Only the young Mrs. Ranelagh believes that it is really murder, and she spends 20 years trying to prove it. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Back in 1978 the Ranelaghs' marriage, none too strong to begin with, nearly foundered over the death of one of their neighbors in the London borough of Richmond upon Thames. Mrs. Ranelagh, encountering Ann Butts outside in their street moments before she died of massive head injuries, was convinced by a spark that passed between them that Mad Annie, despite the taunts directed against her for her race and the tics, especially involuntarily abusive language, caused by Tourette's syndrome, was worth fighting for-and that despite all the evidence that she had drunkenly stumbled into the path of a passing truck, she was murdered. After Mrs. Ranelagh's complaints to the police about everything from Mad Annie's death to a mysterious scratching in the Ranelagh home to a sexual assault outside were dismissed as delusional nuisances, she went abroad with her husband Sam. Now she's had 20 years to gather evidence against the neighbors who, for whatever individual reasons, beat Mad Annie to death, stole her possessions, ignored or assaulted her as she lay dying, and covered it all up. And now that Mrs. Ranelagh is finally back in England, Walters (The Breaker, 1999, etc.) unleashes a withering attack on the former tenants of Graham Road-an attack whose blistering power is only intensified by its patient revelation of layer upon layer of deception by every last party to the outrage. Agatha Christie with the gloves off: a slow-motion train wreck of a novel that not only confirms Walters's kinship with P.D. James and Ruth Rendell, but displays a ferocity far beyond any of their recent work.

Book Details

Published
February 1, 2008
Publisher
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Pages
384
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780307277114

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