Customer Reviews

The Shape of Snakes (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

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4 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(5)

 

 

Walters pulls no punches in a devastating novel of racism, sexism and misogyny, a young wife witness in 1978 London to the violent death of the only black resident of an all-white, economically barren neighborhood. The police view the battered body and declare the death accidental: Mrs. Ranelagh cries murder. But time and circumstance are against her, neither the authorities nor her husband or mother willing to entertain the possibility. After an outrageous assault on her home and person by incensed neighbors and the rejection of the police (the officer himself a blatant racist), Mrs. Ranelagh and her husband leave London for Hong Kong. Twenty years and two sons later, Mrs. Ranelagh returns, bringing with her years of carefully compiled documents and a private agenda to reopen Annie's case and finally mete out justice to the culprit or culprits responsible. If she harbors a yearning for a bit of revenge as well, who can blame a woman who was treated as an emotional incompetent, ignored by everyone, even her family. Served cold, this dish is piquant.

Walters makes a cogent argument for a woman's place in society in the late 1970s-early 1898s, exacerbated by racial prejudice and male superiority. Given the poverty of Graham Street and the preponderance of council houses, stereotypes abound, Annie an easy target for the bullies anxious to vent. It is Mrs. Ranelagh's evolution that is fascinating, from her delicate mental condition following the murder and the concerted efforts by the locals to make her a victim of the same cruelty they rained on Annie Butts. Her husband's indifference and the local investigating policeman's harassment drive the young wife to the edge, even her overbearing mother contributing to the already burdened woman's nightmare. In spite of everything, Mrs. Ranelagh endures, one of the most interesting relationships with her husband, Sam, who has his own personal guilt to deal with, unable to befriend his wife. That the marriage survives is significant.

Working with a wide array of characters, Walters rebuilds the bleak circumstances of Annie's death, philandering husbands, wife-beaters, child-abusers and other social misfits that inhabit the area. Their parents mired in drink and brutality, the children run the streets, aping their parents for lack of better examples. In this scenario, virtually everyone has a secret, save Mrs. Ranelagh, who bears the weight of neighborhood hostility. Stronger from her ordeal, Mrs. Ranelagh puts everyone to shame with her determination, including Sam, who must take responsibility for his own failings. Literally fearless, the protagonist pursues every avenue, turns over every mud-caked rock and faces the animosity of those involved in a bid to find justice for Annie Butts and respect for herself. Twenty years is a long time to wait to redress the past, but this is an exceptional woman familiar with patience: "If you sit by the river long enough the bodies of all your enemies float by." Luan Gaines/ 2008.

Awesome, but hard to read. Ms. Walters covers all the bases of families in trouble and disfunctional families. We have murder, rape, assault, family violence, robbery and racial hatred. That by no means covers all the things that are uncovered with the death of a mentally handicapped negro woman in 1978 in London. The woman who found Annie Butts is the one whose point of view this book is written from and it shows the terrible price that she paid for pursuing the truth about Annie's story. The woman we know as Mrs. Ranleigh sacrifices everything in her life because of her ardent desire to see justice done for Annie. She spends 20 years, both in and out of the country trying to untangle what happened. It appeared that the police were no longer interested, and weren't even that interested when Annie was found dead. Mrs. Ranleigh suspects police corruption and racism were at play with this death. This book is powerfully and honestly written by an author who is at the top of her game. I have learned to expect the unexpected with Ms. Walters and this book was no different. I absolutely loved this book and it's my favourite so far of all of hers that I've read.

I was on board the ferry from Dover to Calais browsing through the books on sale. I picked this one up and started to read. I got sucked in straight away and had to purchase the book before we entered the port. I could not put it down and continued to read while on the coach going to Belgium. I did not really remember much about the day trip because my nose was stuck in this gripping story of a lady who witnessed a black lady die in 1978. The black lady sufferd from terettes syndrome and had been ostracised for this and because of her race.

Someone had murdered her and got away with it. Some twenty odd years later the woman, who came upon the black lady as she lay dying, decides she will get to the bottom of the murder.

This story is honestly gripping and I thought this was Minette Walters best.

Something happened on Graham Street in London back in 1970. A woman was murdered, the people that lived there knew it, but hushed it up, called it something else and the one woman, Mrs. Ranelagh, who dissented, moved away.

The murder victim, a woman named Annie, was the only black person on the street. She also suffered from Tourette's Syndrome, so she muttered and sometimes ticked, or she cursed when she couldn't disguise her anger at the way she was treated. Of course the locals were unaware of her condition, so they assumed she was a drunken lunatic. Unfortunately for her, Annie knew something about the suburban debauchery in her community, which she tried to tell Mrs. Ranelagh before being murdered.

Annie's death was written off as an alcoholic accident and when Mrs. Ranelagh tried to tell the police of her suspicions, they conspired with her husband, mother and neighbors in writing her off as an neurotic woman with a persecution complex. Then she ends up being the butt of some very cruel bullying herself from her neighbors, and eventually leaves the country for Hong Kong for a couple of decades, but now she's back, looking for answers, plus maybe a bit of revenge, so now the detective work begins.

This story is a complex portrait of Mrs. Ranelagh as an avenging angel, or avenging devil, depending on your point of view. We sometimes wonder if she's a bit off her rocker as she tries to track down the murderer. And the real murderer begins to seem less and less important as we learn how many people actually contributed to what happened all those years ago in this great and gripping read.

Although one of Walter's firsts, it is also one of her best, and given the consistently high quality of her writing that is high praise indeed. She has an uncanny ability to not only enter her characters' minds for brief spates, but actually dwell there indefinitely.

Minette Walters always writes gripping, disturbing mysteries. This is her best because it crosses over into a social problem novel that challenges us to think about our own responsibilities towards those less fortunate.

I happen to like Minette Walters's mysteries quite a bit. For this reason, I was very surprised at how much I disliked this novel. It was a painfully slow read because I kept either putting it aside or simply falling asleep while reading. (If you are battling insomnia, though, this book might be a good remedy to try.)

The main impression I got from this book is that Walters decided to base it on some sort of a political message, which is never a good idea for a mystery writer. (For those of you who read Elizabeth George's What Came Before He Shot Her, The Shape of Snakes tries to do something similar but fails even worse.) As a result of this attempt at making a political statement, the characters come out completely fake and it's impossible to care about what happens to any of them. This is very unusual for Walters who usually creates some pretty memorable characters. The writing is stilted and plodding, which is also very surprising for this writer.

The worst thing about the novel, however, was the ending. I am not going to give out any hints about what the ending is, of course, but it was the biggest disappointment of this generally blah book. After struggling through the entire painfully boring novel only to find such a horrible, silly, soppy and unconvincing ending was really frustrating.

If you want to find out what Minette Walters is really like as a mystery writer, read her great The Scold's Bridle: A Novel or The Ice House: A Novel but don't waste your time or money on this boring quasi-political concoction.

This book was ok, not as good as Minette Walters usually is, but my complaint is that a lot of the story is told in "correspondence" and is very hard to read on the kindle. It is impossible to increase the size of the font and therefore almost impossible to read.

Beware!

A major detraction of this novel are the newspaper clippings, e-mails, and various letters strewn about the pages imitating the visual style of aforementioned correspondence. Rather than paint with linguistic merit, this author just tossed images amidst the text, pulling me out of the story. I felt a distaste toward that before even cracking the spine. The second most noticeable thing happens to be the errors in syntax and grammar. The editing was severely lacking. There's no excuse for poor editing. Her writing itself was also sub-par, taking sudden jolts giving the impression that she used a thesaurus to tack a sharper sounding word over the top of her more common vocabulary.

The plot itself is absolutely terrible. The protagonist, Mrs. Ranalagh, witnesses the death of an odd spinster on her block, and delves into a murky obsession attempting to prove there was foul play afoot. I suppose the author's intentions were to reveal what the protagonist knew all along as the supporting characters find out, but there are far too many minute details that seem haphazardly strewn about, hardly interwoven within the story. Mrs. Ranalagh's main intention is vengeance as opposed to the paraded "justice", and it becomes painfully apparent just a few chapters in. Anticlimactic. That's all I have to say about it. There is NO resolution or retribution in this novel what-so-ever. I was left for want when I closed the back cover. I can't say there's one redeeming quality about it, aside from the faintest hope I had in my mind that it would somehow take a positive turn and have a fulfilling ending... It kept me reading; I was disappointed.

I, like the other reviewers, am an avid Minette Walters fan. I am not a fan, however, of this book. As one reviewer stated, the ending was a sloppy mess and compeltely unconvincing. The story itself was dreadfully slow paced and appears like it was a half hearted effort in writing. The story wasn't even interesting. The way the main character compiled her thoughts was hard to keep up with. It jumped all over the place. Her detective work over the course of the 20 years the story took to come to fruition was laughable. This book was truly dire - just about every character is a testament to the worst of humanity. It was as if Ms. Walters compiled everything loathsome in a being and thrust it upon the reader in several characters. The stereotypes were rampant with her portrayal of low income, uneducated people as unremorseful criminals. I can honestly say that I hated this book. Her graphic depiction of brutality against animals was the ultimate slap in the face. We get it - ignorant people who are cruel do brutal things without any regret and inflict pain and suffering upon others. The fact that it was a central focus of this book was painful. I can honestly say I hated this book.