Wisdom of Serpents — Ronald Levitsky

Civil rights lawyer Nate Rosen, introduced in Love That Kills, travels from Washington, D.C., to rural Tennessee in this unconvincing mystery about a fundamentalist church whose members handle rattlesnakes and drink strychninesp ok . Rosen's law school friend, Jesse Compton, who now teaches courses on popular culture at a college near Nashville, was observing a church service when a member was bitten by a rattler. After charges are brought against the minister, Gideon McCrae, Compton wonders whether the rights of the church group, which includes McCrae's beautiful daughter Bathsheba and Claire Hobbes, young wife of a wealthy local businessman, are being violated. Claire's husband, who hated the church's influence on his wife, is poisoned and dies, another church member is shot, and then a blackmailing PI is mortally stabbed. As the investigation uncovers Claire's unsavory past and a conflict between Hobbes and his brother, Rosen is personally troubled as McCrae's unshakeable faith revives memories of his strict upbringing in the Jewish religion, which he has abandoned. Red herrings are obviously, if plausibly, placed, and Levitsky offers a fine surprise in his resolution, but until then the story is fatally mired in forced dialogue and shallow characterization. (June)