The Serpent's Kiss

This is one terrific thriller! Sullivan, known more for his "macho pursuit" thrillers like "Labyrinth" tears into the detective genre with outstanding gusto! Seamus Moynihan is a perfect hero, flawed but persistent, and very human. The murders are unbelivably gruesome, and it's a nail biting read from start to finish. Since other reviewers have outlined the plot, what more can I say? It has some incredible suspense scenes and a knockout of a twist in revealing the culprit. This is a great must for thriller fans. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

THE SERPENT'S KISS hits you like a freight train from page one! All you want to do is read this book every minute you can once you encounter the horrific death scene tht homicide detective Semus Moynihan takes in where a naked man has been bitten three times by a deadly snake. This well crafted tale takes you in to the kinky world of erotic and twisted sex, black market herpetology, cults and a Biblical mystery that is a shocker. Sargent Moynihan is top notch, tough, stubborn, handsome, and can turn the ladies' heads. He's a character that is realistic, has his troubles with the death of his father, dealing with his divorce and ten year old son. However, he works like a well oiled machine when working with his team of detectives solving cases. The characters are riveting, the prose excellent--all in all a prize package. Best of all this is the first in a series about Semus Moynihan. Hold onto your hats readers as it's a wild and bumpy ride from start to finish with an electrifying ending that is unforgetable.I'm a romance reviewer who also loves mysteries. After discovering Mark Sullivan I'm a dyed-in-the-wool fan now. I'm making a bee-line to track down the rest of his books. I have LABYRINTH on my nighttable to read next. Go to your nearest bookstore or order online. Yes, he is that good!

There are two points, I think, during THE SERPENT'S KISS where it is immediately obvious that Mark T. Sullivan has developed into one of our best contemporary writers. The first is a fairly sedate moment, a little over one-third of the way through the book, and involves a fairly sedate episode --- an account of a dinner (a date, actually, though they don't really call it that) between San Diego homicide detective Seamus Moynihan and Professor Susan Dahoney, author of THE SECOND WOMAN. The dinner is not necessarily pivotal to the main plot. However, Sullivan sets it up so well, stressing the details where he needs to while leaving other things to the imagination that one sits up and realizes that this is a first-rate craftsman at work. It's not that THE SERPENT'S KISS isn't uniformly great from the first page; it's just that the suspense factor is ratcheted so high that it's easy to overlook just what a great stylist Sullivan is.The second point? It's a little over halfway through the book, when Sullivan switches locales from the deceptively beautiful streets of San Diego to the backwoods of rural Alabama. Sullivan captures the area and some of its residents so perfectly that you would swear you were reading a diary of his own experiences. And maybe you are...you never know.But the story! Ah, let's not forget the story! THE SERPENT'S KISS begins with a naked victim tied to a bed and subjected to a slow, excruciatingly painful death by snakebites. The murderer leaves an obscure quotation written on a mirror, but there almost no other clues. The investigation follows a number of twists and turns that include Internet chat rooms, television show hosts, captive reptile enthusiasts, and rapper crime lords --- but each potential thread of the investigation results in a dead end. Moynihan, and the San Diego police force, are in a quandary, one that is made worse while the killer strikes again and again, seemingly able to roam at will. The investigation appears to hit an insurmountable roadblock until a similar murder that occurred decades before in rural Alabama seems to provide the motivation behind the murders and the identity of the murderer. But Sullivan and THE SERPENT'S KISS ultimately keep the reader, as well as Moynihan, guessing until the very end.Moynihan is a sympathetic and believable character who has just enough trouble balancing the professional and the personal to seem all too real. If by the conclusion of THE SERPENT'S KISS you want him back, you'll be happy to know that this is only the first in a series of what promises to be riveting books featuring Moynihan. Oh, one other thing. Given the phallic imagery associated with snakes, THE SERPENT'S KISS is somewhat erotic, to say the least. And there's a money paragraph or two near the conclusion that is a definite water cooler moment. It'll have you checking the bed before the lights go out for at least a few nights --- at least. But THE SERPENT'S KISS is worth it. --- Reviewed by Joe Ha