cover image Snake Dance

Snake Dance

Linda French Mariz. Crimeline, $4.99 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-553-29515-3

The scene is the fictional Redemption Parish in Louisiana's Cajun country where the real Atachafalaya River flows. Anthropologist Laura Ireland (introduced in Mariz's Body English ) is here to meet the family of her cop boyfriend Theophile (pronounced Toe-feel) Talbot. Eventually they come across a corpse, Sheriff Boo Guidry, lying face up on asphalt: ``His white forehead was a scrambled mass of flesh and hair; two streaks of black oil ran down his khaki shirt.'' But even before the killing of Boo, Theo's decadent daddy, Valmont, nearly gets blown up on the site of the Talbots' old sugar refinery. Thus begins a convoluted plot about dirty doings on the bayou. The cast of characters includes radical nuns, a black teenage singer who was exploited by the deceased lawman and a governor who may be party to murder. Mariz's writing is suitably rich but sometimes trite, as when Laura, in bed beside Theo, says: ``I don't know if I'm in the mood right now.'' But the heroine is definitely up for being chased by a Klansman and rescuing her boyfriend from slow death in a tomb. Overall, there are too many cooks in this gothic gumbo stew, a Louisiana version of Chinatown. (Sept.)