Rating: 
Summary: Ugly, Cruel, and Excellent
Review: For me, the stomach-turning cruelty to cats - repeatedly described in horrible detail - and disabled woman alike overrides pretty much everything else about this book. I know this - and worse - goes on in the world but I don't want to read about it also in fiction so quit the book halfway through. Too bad, because Ms. Walters is otherwise an excellent author.
Rating: 
Summary: Loved her other books but this is my least favorite.
Review: For some reason--maybe it's me--I just couldn't really get involved and caring about the characters and the plot unfoldment in this novel of Minette Walters. I started with THE BREAKER and found that to be intense, "spot on", and perfectly British as the sinister thriller progressed. THE ICE HOUSE was also great and I recommend either of those over this one.
Other reviewers have done justice to the plot and offered a more positive reading. I'll just offer the analysis that a writing strength can cut both ways. Minette Walters' characters and plots are brilliantly detailed and complex. . .. but if I don't really care about or connect with the characters and/or the unsolved mystery then the density becomes dulling and I am largely unable to follow it with any enthusiatic attentiveness.
And to chime in on one other controversy, I am neutral regarding the cruelty to cats here as well--it seemed to me to be a minimal and anecdotal part of the story
Rating:
Summary: Mistress of human duplicity
Review: Minette Walters is one of the few mistery writers of all time, who is a true master of the form. "The shape of snakes" is another one of the complex and deeply disturbing novels that she writes like nobody else. She deals with horrid things: racism, infidelity ,extreme violence, trappings of mental illness. As usual there is no desire to make things more easier on poor readers soul. She writes it as it is. Harsh and brutal and more than a little sickening, just as human suffering is. No cosmetics can cover the bruises and the immense pain that some unfortunate people have to endure.
Minette Walters dedicated her amazing talent to these people and the world is a better place for it.
Rating:
Summary: The best of its kind.
Review: This is the best mystery novel I have ever read to date. However, I am not here to go details about how good is this book, but just like to say some words over some reviews I just happened to read here.
I find those reviews quite disturbing in which people usually complain about animal cruelity written in this book. To say so, I am most devoted animal lover (cats included of course) but I believe one cannot mix up the reality with fiction. And also I do not think the book's description of cruelity to cats either surpass or worth remembering than the cruelity, wickedness and dark psychos of human characters played in this book. And above all, real and pure cruelities directed to both human and animals alike are being taking place in the real world out there with every passing second of our lives.
So my suggestion is try to recognize and rejoice in a good book when you have the privilege and be disturbed and offended by the real world cruelities.
Rating: 
Summary: Harrowing mystery for non-mystery readers
Review: This book was a book-club read for me, and I would not have found it otherwise. While I very much enjoy the PBS series "Mystery" I've never been much of a mystery reader-- my little experience with it has been that I grow impatient with the prose and am not engaged enough by the literary pleasures of the book, just waiting for the secrets to be revealed.Well this book is a great mystery for people who thought like me. The prose is wonderful-- it's not so much a whodunnit, although that is part of it, as it is a portrait of a whole town full of cruelty, misunderstanding and pain-- including the guilt of the main character. The first-person narration is wonderful although we do come to learn that the narrator is holding back. But this seems less a ploy of the genre than a function of the character's psychological makeup-- in short, a fine literary device. The book also, unusually for an adult novel, though it's common in YA novels, includes examples of email and photographs. This adds greatly to the uncomfortable feeling of being implicated in the sadness of the past. Warning: some of the episodes we learn about are hard to take. There's cruelty to animals, rape, and cruelty to the disabled. But none of it seems gratuitous, and I found this a very satisfying, harrowing read. Sneaky, scary and sad. As with the best mysteries I have read-- I immediately reread it, this time reading the incidents with the benefit of my new knowledge.
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