The Snake Tattoo
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4.3 • 40 Ratings
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- $1.99
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
Hailed by Sue Grafton as “a true original,” ex-cop turned private eye Carlotta Carlyle risks her neck in Boston’s Combat Zone for two very different clients
Six-foot-tall, redheaded ex-cop and Boston-based private eye Carlotta Carlyle is “the genuine article: a straightforward, funny, thoroughly American mystery heroine” (New York Post).
Carlotta Carlyle is halfway through a pizza when her former boss, Lieutenant Mooney of the Boston Police, shows up at her door needing help even more than Carlotta needs a case. In a Combat Zone bar, Mooney got into a scrap with a stranger over a woman. Now the stranger is comatose, the woman has vanished, and Mooney has been suspended. He wants Carlotta to find the blond hooker with a snake tattoo who witnessed the brawl, and who can exonerate him.
Doing surveillance in the Zone, Carlotta gets a second case. A ritzy prep school kid with a bloody lip hires her to find his missing girlfriend. Drawn into two different yet equally dangerous worlds where dead bodies are showing up, Carlotta has only two weeks to save the most honest cop in Boston from going to jail, and to find a girl whose privileged parents don’t seem to care that she’s run away.
The Snake Tattoo was named an outstanding book of the year by the London Times.
The Snake Tattoo is the 2nd book in the Carlotta Carlyle Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The award-winning author of A Trouble of Fools rekindles her 61 redheaded female private eye, Carlotta Carlyle, in a rivetingly well-told story. Her old friend, Lieutenant Mooney of the Boston police, is under investigation for excessive brutality and Carlyle is trying to track down the lone witness who can clear his name, a blonde hooker with a snake tattoo. While on surveillance in Boston's Combat Zone, Carlyle (who drives a cab to make ends meet) accidentally gets a fare and a second case; a troubled teenage boy, freshly rolled for his wallet, tumbles into her cab and involves her in his search for a missing classmate. The boy's case takes Carlyle to the Emerson School, a mini-Harvard prep school, whose putting-green grass and stately buildings seem worlds removed from the Combat Zone's alleys and three-story flophouses. But after she discovers the body of Emerson's drama teacher, Carlyle realizes the spotless image is a facade. There are surprises at the finish, made all the more potent by the novel's unforced paced and charm. Mystery Guild main selection.
