{"id":11136,"date":"2024-08-26T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-26T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11136"},"modified":"2024-08-25T20:24:00","modified_gmt":"2024-08-26T00:24:00","slug":"the-serpent-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11136","title":{"rendered":"The Serpent Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With Sofia Slater\u2019s latest crime mystery, you have not only an intriguing whodunnit, but, although it\u2019s set in contemporary times, The Serpent Dance<\/a><\/em> feels like a trip back in time to the era when Cornish midsummer revelries first involved bonfires, iconic music, river offerings, and the creation of wicker animals, later consumed by the ritual fire. Slater draws on the persistence of these ancient practices, mixing the traditional and the modern in ways that occasionally baffle her protagonist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

London graphic designer Audrey Delaney\u2019s boyfriend of ten months, Noah, has planned a surprise getaway for them. She\u2019s convinced herself (and prematurely told all her friends) that he\u2019s taking her to Paris. When it turns out they\u2019re headed to the fictional Cornish village of Trevennick, she tries not to show her disappointment, but Noah realizes he\u2019s missed the mark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From there, their situation goes from bad to much, much worse. Their B&B is a modern, glass-walled home overlooking the river. Inside, it\u2019s open-plan carried to an extreme. Their landlady will be staying in the master bedroom, with just a wisp of separation between her and the guest bedroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their hostess is a renowned television personality, and Noah takes to her with unexpected enthusiasm. Something isn\u2019t right. Why this place? What\u2019s Noah\u2019s real agenda? Why his interest in this older woman? The twisting lines of the eponymous serpent dance itself can\u2019t compare to the secrets Audrey is about to discover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No need to worry be jealous of their hostess, though, because before morning she lies dead in a pool of blood, a knife to her throat. The police initially consider it a suicide, but elements of the crime scene simply don\u2019t add up. Since Audrey and Noah are the only other people in the house, and since anyone else padding about could not do so without risking being seen (all those glass walls), police attention is on them. On Noah, particularly.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The town is preparing for the midsummer Golowan festivities, masks and wicker obby orses everywhere. It\u2019s a deeply local tradition and outsiders aren\u2019t especially welcome, especially when the shadow of murder has fallen on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Noah is tucked away in jail, their hostess\u2019s isn\u2019t the only body to turn up. Audrey tackles her predicament in the way she tries to work through any difficult circumstance, by drawing, and the realism of her depiction of Stella\u2019s corpse, among other local characters is inevitably misunderstood. It\u2019s a classic case of being out of one\u2019s own element. This profoundly unsettling atmosphere makes Audrey anxious about the wrong things, so that she doesn\u2019t recognize the danger to herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found the mix of past and present, culture and calamity quite captivating. Nice job, Sofia Slater! Order your copy here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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With Sofia Slater\u2019s latest crime mystery, you have not only an intriguing whodunnit, but, although it\u2019s set in contemporary times, The Serpent Dance feels like a trip back in time to the era when Cornish midsummer revelries first involved bonfires, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"If you think a mystery titled The Serpent Dance should have some twists and turns, you won't be disappointed. Great story involving Cornish traditions, including obby orses!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1335,52,1288,266,3,126],"tags":[2216,2214,2215],"class_list":["post-11136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amateur-detective","category-crime","category-culture","category-history","category-mystery","category-reading-2","tag-cornwall","tag-sofia-slater","tag-the-serpent-dance"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2TC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11136"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11139,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11136\/revisions\/11139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}