Seize The Shape Of Snakes Executed By Minette Walters Offered As Audio Books

like to think I don't view the world around me with naivety or idealized warmth but the characters in this book seem to me to be.
. . just questionable. Everyone appears repellent or unkind in some manner or another and I came away feeling very strongly that any goodness in Walters' world is merely built upon false pleasantries and ulterior motives.
Don't get me wrong, I get it, this happens and people can be horrible, but you can't build a world or a worthwhile story out of this one idea/perception alone.
Every single character cannot have the same base nastiness to their nature, It just doesn't work. As the saying goes, "It takes all kinds",
So, sure, a strong effort was made to bring each character to life but the fact that I could rarely find anything genuine or pure in any of them created a rift so strong that the story came and went without any real connection ever hoping to be made.
Just bleh. That's how I feel after reading this, Bleh. This psychological murder mystery is, in my opinion, one of Walters best, And I have read lots of her work,



The plot is about a woman determined to solve what she believes to be the murder of a neighbour and friend,



The book starts with I could never decide whether Mad Annie was murdered because she was mad or because she was black.
And while her killing may be resolved, this question remains a source of vexation throughout,



In the telling of a really good story, this book raises issues of racism, the acceptance or lack thereof of the mentally ill and socially snobbery.
Classism and the lack of ability of the working class in England in this instance to accept those they consider beneath them are central themes to this book too.
In addition, the question of revenge as opposed to justice runs through the narrative too,



While the book is set in England in thes and in the lates, the issues raised are very pertinent to current day South Africa.
We have a rapidly growing middle class who seem unable to get over their poor roots we have racism hidden all over the place in all directions we have poverty rendering people unable to get the help they need and we a police force many of us do not trust.




But do not think this book is just about issues and deep stuff, It is also a wonderfully readable story in which a killing is unraveled and a mystery solved, The multiformat structure of the book makes it easy to read too it moves from straight text, through emails and memos to personal letters, Various points of view are thus included, making the story rich and well rounded,



Be warned though, the last page of the book had me in tears, I sat in bed, weeping for the deep deep sadness of it all, But dont read the last page first, It would not make you cry unless you had read the whole story, And if you read the last page and then read the story, much of the story will be wasted,



If you like mystery and well written yarn, then this book should be on your holiday reading list for this December,



Strongly recommended and worth actually buying, especially if you can pass it on to another mystery story lover,


Absolutely excellent, Minette Walters' plotting is outstanding, At the time this came out it was a response to the murder of Stephen Lawrence in the UK, for which justice was finally achieved, insomuch as that is possible the lasting legacy being the change in the double jeopardy lawyears after this was published that allowed his killers to be reprosecuted finally.


Walters addresses the issues of being different the victim is not only black but also has Tourette's Syndrome, The police refuse to believe there is anything to suggest murder, Twenty years later this still haunts the neighbour who found her dying, Walters tells her stories with the addition of correspondence and newspaper articles fictional in a unique style, She never revolts her reader by including any gratuitous word imagery but writes tight psychological thrillers, It's not a genre I usually like due to the ubiquitous gratuitous word imagery many authors employ, The extraordinary new novel by the awardwinning, bestselling author of The Sculptress and The Scolds Bridle,
“I could never decide whether Mad Annie was murdered because she was mad or because she was black, ” So begins Minette Walters gripping new story of one womans twentyyear quest for justiceor is it for revenge
When Annie Butts dies in a rainsoaked gutter in, almost everyone is sure she was killed in a traffic accident.
Only one personthe woman who found Annie as she diedis convinced she was murdered, She has no evidence, but shes prepared to risk everythingincluding her marriageto prove it, Kom er niet doorheen, boeit me niet, Another terrific pageturner from my new favorite crimestory author, A black woman, Annie, dies under suspicious circumstances in the working class London neighborhood where she lived, The ensuing investigation resulted in the death being ruled accidental and the woman who found the dying woman labeled hysterical because of her insistence that foul play had been involved.
Twenty years later, she returns to find justice for Annie, and a certain measure of revenge on the people who turned their back on a sordid state of affairs.
A dark look at racial prejudice and class warfare in modern England, Ms Walters writes as fine a police procedural as anyone I have encountered, Her skill at revealing elements of the puzzle without giving away the shape of the final tableaux is nothing short of amazing, In this outing, the investigator is a woman whose sense of justice and

drive to rectify past injuries is indomitable, a private citizen and not a policeman at all.
Her methods and painstaking research are as good as any official investigator, and maybe better since she only has one case, She takes on all comers, including her husband, the violent and bigoted policeman who headed the investigation, the petty criminals and neighborhood bullies who made Annie's life a living hell, and the neighbors whose dirty little secrets kept them from telling the truth at the time and had held them all prisoner since.
A testament to the power of one decent human being standing up for someone no longer able to stand up for herself, Definitely recommended. I felt this was a bit too clever for its own good, I didn't much like the smug narrator, and I nearly gave up many times because it was boring or annoying me, Still, I did finish it, though I'm beginning to realise there are not many crime novels I like, I feel that, often, the evil of the world at large is exaggerated, and all the characters are petty and spiteful, I know this is a very personal reaction though, and many people would rate it higher, This was a great book, really captivating, Recommended to anyone who loves a mystery,
Come to think of it, . . I don't even like mysteries that much, and I still loved it!
About a woman who has never accepted the death of a black woman who lived in her street.
Searching for answers, she uncovers more than just who murdered the poor woman, And although she never spoke to the dead woman, she grows closer to her by trying to find her killer,

Now something for you to think about What is the main characters name Dragged on too long, . . tedious and despicable characters. Forced myself to finish. The truth behind the death of "Mad Annie" is incrementally revealed through correspondence and by the dogged persistence of her neighbor, Mental illness and society's general lack of understanding of it are the story behind the story in this lighterthanexpected mystery, Racism also rears its ugly head, This is the fifth book by Minette Walters that I have read, although not in the order that she wrote them, And, it is probably the last one of hers I'll readat least for a while, This book wore me out, First, none of the characters, including the protagonist first person pov, was likable at all, Second, it was so jam full of deceit and manipulation and resentment and desire for revenge that it left a bad taste in my mouth, Of course, murder isn't pleasant and I don't expect the story of "solving" a murder to be so, but the entire story was built on nothing but deceit and manipulation and no one seemed interested in really doing something because it was the right or good thing to do.
Even the narrator's reason for working so hard to solve a twentyyearsago murder, which wasn't revealed till the end of the book, didn't feel like it was for "good".
It was to make herself feel better and to help her work out her revenge for past wrongs against her,

Which brings me to Walters' other books, There is a pattern of many plot twists and surprises and which I enjoyed through the first two or maybe three books I read, But they all seem so heavy on the deceit and lack of communication and overblown assumptions and lack of tolerance that it becomes like shoveling an unpleasant substance to get to the point.
This probably reflects the smallminded and ugly nature of real murder and even of life in a small community to some degree but, basically, reading them too close together has been wearing and the mystery is overshadowed by the ugliness.
Racism and police brutality wrapped in a murder story set in 's and 's London, Very apt
Tackled racism and mental illness, quite aptly I might add,

Oddly enough, her endings are always happy ones, on a positive note, In that, her books reminds me of Pedro Almodóvar grim stories, rainbow endings, Its always amazing to me how one event becomes firmly engrained in our mind and over decades remains there like a perpetual itch that happens when we least expect it.


I believe that is what happens when we are involved in a traumatic event, like a witness to a death, a horrific accident or the death of a president.
One such event is the subject of this tale by Minette Walters and through her striking and compelling writing, we too are riveted by the event and the story as well.


The story opens with the introduction of a middleaged woman who,years before in thes, had been traumatized when returning to her home, she comes across the body of a poor black woman who had suffered from Tourette's syndrome.
The police investigation wrapped up the death neatly as the case of a drunk woman who had been struck by a deadly glancing blow by a truck when she staggered into the road.


But the main character doesn't believe it and while her personal life forces her to not speak of the incident foryears, she can't seem to stop being involved in gathering information and details of the death.
What she does and what others around her do in response makes for a very compelling story, There are no winners here but the truth will out,

This book has it all, a mystery and a bit of a thriller, as well as a psychological study into marriage, family, friendship, class and race.
They are all there, naked and open to all to see, This was very good reading, .