Snake Shape: The Wootsie Mystery Novel Series

Author: Minette Walters
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-05-01
Features: Minette Walters, the "Queen of Crime Fiction" in the UK, whose works have won the John Creasey Award, the Gold Dagger Award from the Crime Writers' Association of Great Britain, as well as the Edgar Allan Poe Award and the Macavity Award in the United States. Her works have encompassed all possible highest honors for crime fiction across both sides of the Atlantic. This book may be the most unsettling and complex of all her outstanding works. The tension remains tight until the very last page, and that last page may make you shed tears. The unnatural death of a Black woman, Anne, involves profound issues of race and humanity. The coroner determines that Anne died in a car accident. The witness who discovered Anne's body is dissatisfied with the police's hasty conclusion based on prejudice, so they step forward—but under pressure from neighbors and the police, they move the family abroad. Twenty years later, the witness returns to the case, relentless in their pursuit of the truth. They uncover a shocking fact: everyone has had a hand in "Anne's Death." The police, the coroner, neighborhood thugs, streetwalkers, and even long-time friends have all become complicit. Letters, clippings, and medical reports run throughout the book, piecing together the truth of the event. Betrayal, greed, ignorance, fear, and selfishness reveal the horrifying yet real nature of human beings. Who is the mastermind behind the tragedy? And who delivers the final blow?