Gregory & Company
Walters, Minette
The Shape of Snakes
Series: Titles
Awards: Winner Pelle Rosencrantz Award 1998, Denmark
November 1978. The winter of discontent. Britain is on strike. The dead lie unburied, garbage piles in the streets - and somewhere in West London a black woman dies in a rain-filled gutter. Known as "Mad Annie", she was despised by her neighbours. Her passing would have gone unmourned and unnoticed but for the young woman who finds her and believes - apparently against reason - that Annie was murdered. Yet whatever the truth about Annie - whether she was as mad as her neihbours claimed, whether she lived in squalor as the police said, whether she cruelly mistreated the cats found starving in her house - something passed between her and Mrs. Ranelagh in the moment of death that binds this one woman to her cause for the next twenty years. But why is Mrs. Ranelagh so convinced it was murder, when, by her own account, Annie died without speaking? Why does the subject make her husband so angry that he refuses to talk about what happened that night? And why would any woman spend twenty painstaking years uncovering the truth - unless her reasons are personal?
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Latest News
We're delighted to announce that Val McDermid's OUT OF BOUNDS is a finalist for the McIlvanney Prize 2017. The judges had this to say about it: 'The Queen of Scottish crime adds yet more jewels to her crown with Out of Bounds and shows us why she's writing at the very top of her game...Karen Pirie is one of the most engaging and charismatic of all the fictional Scottish Detectives'. The winner will be announced on Friday 8th September as part of Bloody Scotland. read more.
Huge congratulations to Val McDermid on the release of INSIDIOUS INTENT today! INSIDIOUS INTENT is the latest instalment of the Tony Hill series and you can read more about it here. read more.
Many congratulations to Belinda Bauer for being shortlisted for a CWA Gold Dagger award with THE BEAUTIFUL DEAD. The Crime Writers' Association announced the shortlists for this year's Dagger awards at Waterstones Piccadilly on Wednesday 26th July. You can find more information about the awards here. read more.