Snake

When you are handling wild things it is wise to never forget the inherent danger of messing with Mother Nature. A young woman known as Eve had a nightclub act in which she fondles and uses in her act as an erotic prop. One morning she is found dead with her pet python wrapped around her neck.

The case is given to Trompie Kramer, an Africaaner  and his partner Sergeant Zondi. They have been very busy with a case of multiple cases in which shopkeepers of small stores have been gunned down at point blank range for no apparent reason. The witnesses are few, and those who did see something would prefer to keep mum. The inhabitants of this part of town have no love for the police. The police are serious in their intent to stop these massacres even though they are occurring in the wrong part of town as it were.



South Africa during the apartheid era is beautifully portrayed in this novel. The mystery genre is one in which all aspects of society can be examined and included in an interesting story. In SNAKE, one of the crimes being investigated by the team of Afrikaaner Kramer and Bantu Zondi  involves the white population with clues leading to members of the higher social classes. The second set of crimes being investigated by these two men in falls in the poorer sections of town and what they often referred to as the nonwhites which includes people from Greece and Portugal and India.

James McClure does a good job of highlighting many of the injustices and iniquities of the time and in his subtle way suggests how many of the prejudiced notions were hogwash, while at the same time shows examples of the strengths of the different cultures. Nonetheless there's definitely an excellent sense of time and place in the 1960s in South Africa.