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There are two points, I think, during THE SERPENT'S KISS where it is immediately obvious that Mark T. Sullivan has developed into one of our best contemporary writers. The first is a fairly sedate moment, a little over one-third of the way through the book, and involves a fairly sedate episode --- an account of a dinner (a date, actually, though they don't really call it that) between San Diego homicide detective Seamus Moynihan and Professor Susan Dahoney, author of THE SECOND WOMAN. The dinner is not necessarily pivotal to the main plot. However, Sullivan sets it up so well, stressing the details where he needs to while leaving other things to the imagination that one sits up and realizes that this is a first-rate craftsman at work. It's not that THE SERPENT'S KISS isn't uniformly great from the first page; it's just that the suspense factor is ratcheted so high that it's easy to overlook just what a great stylist Sullivan is.
The second point? It's a little over halfway through the book, when Sullivan switches locales from the deceptively beautiful streets of San Diego to the backwoods of rural Alabama. Sullivan captures the area and some of its residents so perfectly that you would swear you were reading a diary of his own experiences. And maybe you are…you never know.
But the story! Ah, let's not forget the story! THE SERPENT'S KISS begins with a naked victim tied to a bed and subjected to a slow, excruciatingly painful death by snakebites. The murderer leaves an obscure quotation written on a mirror, but there almost no other clues. The investigation follows a number of twists and turns that include Internet chat rooms, television show hosts, captive reptile enthusiasts, and rapper crime lords --- but each potential thread of the investigation results in a dead end. Moynihan, and the San Diego police force, are in a quandary, one that is made worse while the killer strikes again and again, seemingly able to roam at will. The investigation appears to hit an insurmountable roadblock until a similar murder that occurred decades before in rural Alabama seems to provide the motivation behind the murders and the identity of the murderer. But Sullivan and THE SERPENT'S KISS ultimately keep the reader, as well as Moynihan, guessing until the very end.
Moynihan is a sympathetic and believable character who has just enough trouble balancing the professional and the personal to seem all too real. If by the conclusion of THE SERPENT'S KISS you want him back, you'll be happy to know that this is only the first in a series of what promises to be riveting books featuring Moynihan. Oh, one other thing. Given the phallic imagery associated with snakes, THE SERPENT'S KISS is somewhat erotic, to say the least. And there's a money paragraph or two near the conclusion that is a definite water cooler moment. It'll have you checking the bed before the lights go out for at least a few nights --- at least. But THE SERPENT'S KISS is worth it.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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