Where Serpents Lie by T. Jefferson Parker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"[...] a little girl enrobed in white netting. A serpent's scale inserted into the web of the net. The girl. The snake. The web. The net. What is the story here? "

I almost never read long books. If an author is unable to say what he or she wants to say on no more than, say, 300 pages, tough luck! Next please! I make an exception, though, for well-written books that contain realistic depictions of characters, situations or places, as far as the psychology and dialogues. Here we have the longest book I have read in a very long time - 550 pages - which is just a thriller slash police procedural. What's more, I have enjoyed it a lot.

I first read T. Jefferson Parker about a quarter of the century ago. I read all his early books and liked most of them a lot, precisely because of the prose and realism, outstanding for the genre. The author is an accomplished literary craftsman, who had a chance to practice his writing when he worked as a reporter for the Newport Ensign.

Where Serpents Lie (1998) is a good example of a thriller that transcends its genre: despite following the standard clichés of thrillers it is very well written and several characters are not just paper templates but seem almost like real people. The protagonist is Terry Naughton, the head of the Crimes Against Youth unit in the Orange County Sheriff Department. Two years ago Terry lost his son, a tragic event he feels responsible for. He is now trying to redeem himself by preventing harm from happening to children.

The novel has one of the most shocking setups I have ever encountered. Terry has infiltrated a pedophile group - men who take advantage of a very young girl offered for services by her parents. The entire scene of a "party" before the expected consummation of the deal is very hard to read, even harder because it reads very realistic. Yet this is not the main plot of the novel. Someone who calls himself The Horridus (Latin name for a species of a venomous viper) abducts little girls - so far there are no rapes and the girls are found alive, but criminals of this type are known to escalate their activities. The search for Horridus becomes the main thread of the plot. Terry's personal problems are tightly woven into the procedural thread.

The gruesome opening scene has a sort of continuation when Terry interviews the little girl prostituted by her parents. The realism of the conversation is totally depressing. The author provides a rich, plausible portrayal of the tangle of business interests in Orange County - his journalistic past is certainly an asset here. Also, the novel offers a real sense of the location; I know Orange County quite well from hundreds of visits so I recognized the locations when reading the text. The scene in the Caspers Wilderness Park provides a good example.

I don't particularly like the scene where Terry buys information from a homeless man who sells newspaper articles: it reeks of the tired "word-on-the street" cliché and it does not read as a pastiche. Also, the "profiler" stuff is so formulaic - but it was a common fad quarter of a century ago: it was almost obligatory to have a profiler in thrillers and procedurals.

Yet overall, the novel is an excellent, great read, way, way, way better than 99% of the genre specimens. Had it been shorter by about 150 pages, I might have even given it the maximum rating. Very highly recommended thriller/procedural.

Four stars

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