Snake

Steven Crossley offers an informative performance of this mystery set in South Africa during the apartheid years. Author James McClure, who died in 2009, was a crime reporter before he began writing this series about white Lieutenant Kramer and black Sergeant Zondi. His street cred shows to marvelous effect in the scenes he sets everywhere from countryside to slums, and the people he profiles, from cops to villagers. This time the team is faced with the apparently unrelated murders of a black shopkeeper and a white "adult entertainer." Crossley keeps listeners abreast of the gripping and psychologically complex plot with helpful shadings of accent and character, and realistic pacing of collegial banter, narrative description, and the many scenes of danger. A.C.S. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine