Snake ─ A Kramer and Zondi Investigation Set in South Africa

Lieutenant Kramer and Sergeant Zondi have their hands full. On the same day that an adult entertainer known as Eve is found accidentally strangled to death in her dressing room, her pet python wrapped dead around her neck, a beloved candy shop owner named "Lucky" Siyayo is shot to death at his counter in a botched robbery. The?detective duo quickly realize neither death is as simple as it looks on the surface: Lucky Siyayo's cash register was all but empty the day he was murdered, which suddenly throws a whole rash of fatal neighborhood robberies into perspective—were none of them robberies at all? It becomes clear a killer is on the loose, but Zondi and Kramer must figure out what the killer is after.

Meanwhile, postmortem analysis reveals that Eve didn't die at the time her ex-boss had stated he'd discovered her body; the more Kramer picks the circumstances apart, the less they make sense. With two very different sets of crimes to solve, Kramer and Zondi set off on treks that take them all over town, from the poorer villages to the sleazy dressing rooms of con artists and pimps to gorgeous steop of the South African countryside in another surefire investigation full of both stirring observations of Apartheid and plenty of mischief. Only one thing is for sure—no one is getting to take his day off this week!

\James McClure (1939-2006) was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he worked as a photographer and then a teacher before becoming a crime reporter. He published eight wildly successful books in the Kramer and Zondi series during his lifetime. The first two books in the series, The Steam Pig and The Caterpillar Cop, are available in paperback from Soho Crime.