The Serpent Club
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Tom Coffey delivers a gut-wrenching debut, a sensational thriller that could be torn from today's headlines. Plunging deep into the morality of a city renowned for sin -- Los Angeles -- this edgy, piercing novel will carve its way into your psyche.
Her name is Megan Wright. Pretty. Thirteen. Nice house. Private school. When she is raped and murdered, it's a story, and Ted Lowe is the one to report it. He's been a reporter for many years, but this is the first time he actually sees a body. Megan was indeed pretty. The crime scene is anything but.
As Ted smoothly uncovers the facts surrounding Megan's death, he finds that the glittery facade of her perfect life was just that -- a thin veneer easily wiped away with the answers to a few well-placed questions. The suspects slowly accumulate: the cold-as-ice mother, the deadbeat surfer father, the friends, the boyfriend who happens to be the son of one of the richest men in California. It could be any one of them. For any reason.
As the spun-out decay of an entire city closes in around Ted, he realizes there are people who do not want this case solved. And if the life of a thirteen-year-old girl was worth taking, so is the life of a reporter who has seen too much.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Coffey covers a lot of legal and moral ground in this fast-paced, shocking and hypnotic debut thriller about a cynical journalist working for an L.A. daily who stumbles into a career-making story while investigating the brutal rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl. Ted Lowe finds himself handling a front-page case when the primary suspect turns out to be the girl's boyfriend, Brad Devlin, the adolescent son of a billionaire CEO of an electronics company who has the connections to protect his son from prosecution. Lowe uses a police source and some questionable reporting tactics to gather clues that incriminate the youth and his father, but his investigation takes a bizarre turn when Brad and his thuggish friends "kidnap" the reporter and force him to ride along while they rape a young girl and her mother. Lowe finds himself drawn to the violence, and his failure to report the crime becomes one of several fascinating angles that unfold as the case comes to trial. The sensationalized trial moves steadily toward an acquittal despite the evidence against Brad, leading Lowe to suspect that the father is pulling strings behind the scenes, and forcing him to choose between testifying about his own criminal behavior to help convict Brad or maintaining his silence to protect his career. Coffey, a New York Times sports editor, employs a deceptively spare, world-weary voice to slowly reveal the origins of his protagonist's emotional limbo, and he comes up with stunningly original plot twists to emphasize Lowe's excruciating moral dilemma. The cast of quirky L.A. characters helps give context to Lowe's bizarre behavior, lending color to a narrative combining the suspense of a police procedural with the moral intrigue of a legal thriller. In a genre where breaking new ground is a rare achievement, Coffey has gone far beyond the restrictions of formula to craft a remarkable debut.
