THE SERPENT'S KISS

Seamus Moynihan is a San Diego homicide detective with an analytical mind, a disastrous family life and the annoying habit of deliberately antagonizing his bosses. In this, Sullivan's seventh novel, Moynihan faces a Bible-reading serial killer who uses poisonous snakes and strychnine-laced apples to gruesomely murder his victims. The serial killings are some of the strangest Moynihan has ever seen, and experts eagerly fall all over themselves to help him out even though most end up being suspects. With his former Israeli cop partner, Rikko Varjjan, Moynihan chases wild leads, but the pair make too many mistakes and the killer taunts them. Wrongful arrests, embarrassing scandals and a foul-up shoot-out put Varjjan in the hospital and Moynihan on suspension. Working on his own, Moynihan follows tips to a peculiar television celebrity, a famous zoo and an obscure fundamentalist Christian snake-handling church in Alabama. Smart as Moynihan is, he pulls some dumb stunts, and this well-crafted police procedural could have finished up much sooner if he had just followed his own rules and paid attention to a crucial detail. With Moynihan, Sullivan has created a solid if familiar character—a brilliant cop who's divorced, lonely, lives on a boat, drives a vintage 1967 Corvette and chases women. The investigative action is exciting and credible, and readers won't be disappointed, even if the killer's motive for murder is a bit too weird to be believed. (July 1)