Clara Benning is a vet living in a small rural village in Dorset. Clara’s work is at a hospital treating sick and injured wild animals. Thus Clara lives a reclusive life taking no part in village life, mainly owing to a facial disfigurement that makes her wary of any sort of social contact.
But she is thrust into village life when she takes a telephone call one morning from a distraught young mother who has found a snake in the cot with her baby.
This is not the first encounter with a snake that the village has experienced, and already there has been one death from a snake bite. So when a village meeting is called at the home of millionaire Clive Ventry, Clara finds herself unwillingly thrust into the limelight as an expert on snakes. Suddenly Clara is just where she doesn’t want to be – the centre of attention. She meets her neighbour a nurse called Sally, and her next-door neighbour Matt Hoare. As more snakes appear in the village, she comes into contact with Sean North a reptile expert who presents a TV wide life programme.
Assisting an old lady in the village her interest is caught by reference to a fire that burnt the village church down in 1958 and that the snakes have come back? But as Clara tries to find out more she runs up against a blank wall – no one will talk about the tragedy. As Clara attempts to uncover the truth behind the fire she finds herself in kinds of trouble, but exactly from whence does it come – why and who after all this time?
Reading this book I learnt a great deal about snakes, all of it interesting and some of it utterly fascinating, but nothing that makes me want to ever encounter one, whilst I am prepared to believe that they don’t feel slimy to the touch, but have skin like silk, I still don’t have any desire to hold one.
The story itself was intriguing, and compelling, one of those books that you can’t put down. Highly recommended.
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Lizzie Hayes