Chutes and Adders (Partners in Crime) - Hardcover

Snakes! A saw-scaled viper, sent in a package, kills a clerk at Noah's Ark, the Syracuse, NY, pet store run by journalist Robin Light after the death of her no-account husband, Murphy, who was always trying to get rich the easy way until he died of a cocaine overdose. When the police find $50,000 hidden in the store, Robin discovers that Murphy and the clerks had been trafficking in illegal snakes and a few other goodies, such as a severed head, shipped, it seems, for use in a Caribbean witchcraft ritual. On top of all this, the police, led by surly detective Donnella Lorenzo, think that Robin is the killer. Supported by breakfasts of coffee, chocolate bars, and handfuls of vitamins; warmed by Camels and increasing quantities of booze; and bailed out occasionally by Murphy's old friend George Samson, a 6' 4'', 300-lb., ``blue black'' police detective, Robin searches for the murderer. Like a Kinsey Millhone wannabe, Robin travels through the cold underbelly of Syracuse in her own idiosyncratic car: a made-over Checker cab, the set of wheels that reminds her of her New York City home and the vehicle that Block's publishers hope will carry Robin through a thriving detective series. An interesting debut, but grisly and not for the serpent-shy. Robin has a slithering encounter with a king cobra and feeds crickets to reptiles. A modern-day Eve, she can look a snake in its cold eye; it's the large spiders she can't stand. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This sharp-edged and wry mystery takes off quickly when an employee of Robin Light's marginally profitable pet store in Syracuse, N.Y., dies painfully after opening a package containing a highly poisonous and aggressive snake. It soon becomes apparent, however, that the most venomous creatures in Block's debut novel are the two-legged kind. Robin, recently widowed when her criminally inclined husband Murphy died of a cocaine overdose, becomes prime suspect in the killing when $50,000 is found hidden away in the store, leading the thoroughly nasty cops to assume that Murphy was trading in protected animals. When Robin finds another $20,000 hidden in her apartment, she begins a search for the killer that leads her into bizarre interviews with a street thug (who later winds up beaten into a coma), a neighbor (who ends up dead, pushed off his balcony) and a sadistic zookeeper (who wisely remains silent); a smarmy lawyer and a sinister landlord add spice and complications. What seems to tie all these disparate folk together is the Latin American religion of Santeria--truly an odd practice to be popping up in bitterly cold upstate New York. Robin is an engaging, if stubborn and reckless, amateur sleuth whom readers will look forward to meeting again.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.