The Shape of Snakes

Fiction by Minette Walters,

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/

I recently read a new book by this author that I really liked (see The Last Hours) and I wanted to read some of her other novels. I knew that the author's previous books had been different from the new one; the new story was historical fiction and Minette Walters was apparently previously known for mystery fiction. So I didn't expect this novel to be like the other one... but still...

This book was really different from what I expected. The main character, who for some reason has no first name given, is suffering from a full-on case of Hell-Bent Syndrome.* I mean, she is so DETERMINED to find the person responsible for a murder that everyone thinks is an accident that she spends over TWENTY YEARS on the case. Seriously.

Usually I don't really care for Hell-Bent Syndrome (Short definition: when a character is so wrapped up in solving a mystery that ain't none of their business that they drive everyone insane, often including the reader) but in this case, it was just part of her back story. She'd been obsessed so long that it almost made sense.

But the plot and the resolution were not as absorbing as I'd hoped. Maybe the problem was how very miserable everyone in the story was. I didn't much like any of them.

Still, It was a pretty good mystery, and I was surprised to learn who the killer really was.

*Hell-Bent Syndrome

(See Come Home by Lisa Scottoline)

This is where the protagonist spends the majority of the book Hell-Bent on solving/getting to the root of whatever the problem of the story is (to the exclusion of everything else in his/her life), while EVERYONE else tells him/her to STOP IT. Many times this path involves the main character getting (or coming perilously close to being) fired, evicted, divorced, disowned, and/or bankrupted, all in pursuit of the elusive TRUTH that he/she is SURE is about to be found.

In real life, this would land our friend the protagonist straight in the looney bin. Think about it: When EVERYONE else's version of reality is the polar opposite of yours, that is called, "You're crazy, dude." (In layman's terms.) But not in the world of the Thriller Novel.

In the Thriller Novel, the sufferer of Hell-Bent syndrome is inexplicably and against all odds proven right in the end, and gets to say "I told you so!" to all the nay-sayers in his/her life who thought he/she was nuts. And then he/she magically recovers everything lost during the downward-spiral portion of the story, like the proverbial country song played backwards. ("You get your wife back, your truck back, your job back...")