Awakening

April 6, 2009
Clara Benning, a reclusive vet who’s the narrator of Bolton’s solid second thriller (after Sacrifice
), spends her days treating badgers, boars and other wildlife at the Little Order of St. Francis in an isolated Dorset, England, village. When a distraught mother calls on Clara to remove a venomous snake from her baby’s crib and another family’s home is overrun with snakes, including a deadly Australian taipan, Clara realizes there must be a human agency behind the snake attacks, at least two of which will prove fatal. With the help of Assistant Chief Constable Matt Hoare and eccentric herpetologist and TV star Sean North, Clara begins to unravel a tangle of long-kept village secrets stretching back generations. Bolton milks the myriad snakes, even the harmless ones, for all they’re worth, but falters with Clara, whose fraught family history (she bears disfiguring facial scars from a rarely discussed childhood accident) tends to undercut the suspense.

May 1, 2009
In Bolton's sophomore effort (after "Sacrifice"), solitary wildlife vet Clara Benning is called to investigate when snakes appear to be overrunning her small Dorset village. Then a man dies from what is believed to be a snakebite, but his body is full of too much venom to have been naturally caused by a single snake. At the same time, Clara's mother dies, bringing up painful childhood memories revolving around Clara's facial scar. Bolton has written a dark, eerie tale worthy of Edgar Allan Poe but in the modern style of Barbara Vine and Simon Beckett.

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2009
There is love, murder and snakes in the grass in a picturesque English village.

Clara Benning is a young veterinary surgeon whose patients these days run to animals considerably less exotic than cobras. But she's logged a good bit of time in the herpetology precincts of world-class zoos. Clara knows which snakes are placid, which are poisonous and which are found in Dorsetshire only in the company of person or persons unknown. Consider the Australian taipan, aka"the Devil from Down Under." It's big, powerful, easily annoyed and routinely lethal. Clara can't explain how a taipan came to Dorset. Nor can hunky Assistant Chief Constable Matt Hoare, who's confronted with a community in rising panic. What's clear, however, is that someone pretty smart about snakes is employing them as deadly weapons. Evil is slithering through Dorset, and plucky Clara won't rest until she scotches it.

Bolton (Sacrifice, 2008) overplots on occasion, but her heroine, so troubled and so valiant, is irresistible.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 1, 2009
The author of Sacrifice (2008) creates another strong, unusual woman protagonist in her second novel, which makes up forgaps in credibility with page-turning suspense and spectacular snake science. Boltons hero this time is insecure, solitary wildlife vetClara Benning, who is calledon when the quiet English village where she lives is beset by an epidemic of slithery reptiles, more than a few of which are non-native andlethally poisonous. Clara, whose scarred face has caused her to spend most of her life avoiding human company, suddenly finds herself the center of attention, at the precise time whenher mothers death has called up painful childhood memories and increased her emotional vulnerability.Theresa touch of romanceto leavenClarasnumerous grapplings with danger.Murky, abandoned churches and dark family secrets stretching back a generation lend a compelling gothic sensibility tothis story ofa woman who awakens to new possibilities.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)