Snakewrist

by Christopher Burns

Sophie Parnaby was the surviving sister of Dexter Parnaby, a celebrated missionary and explorer whose plane had crashed into the South American jungle twenty years before. When Toby Savage landed the job of cataloguing her library he was delighted.
Until now his life had been dull and here was a challenging assignment, a chance to rub shoulders with the wealthy, even to experience a little secondhand adventure amongst the dusty anthropological volumes.
But Sophie needed a biographer for her sainted brother. That task would take Toby into the dense rainforests in search of clues and make his name. Meanwhile there were mysteries closer to home. What were the strange markings on the wrists of Sophie s Indian servant Jorge, for example?
Jorge had been plucked from the jungle as a child-rescued or kidnapped, _ depending on your point of view-and civilized in the West. But Jorge had plans of his own, as Toby was soon to discover ...
The range of character and location highlight the confidence and strength with which Burns is writing
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
An ingenious anthropological mystery story... bringing a freshness to contemporary British fiction
INTERZONE

240 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1988

About the author

NARRATOR:

Christopher Burns has performed in the London and Broadway performances of Stones in His Pockets and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in acting from NYU and a Bachelor of Arts in comparative literature from Colorado College. In addition to Broadway, Christopher has appeared onstage in numerous New York City and regional shows as well as on TV and film.


(source: Dreamscape)


Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

An emotionally cold and arrogant librarian, assigned to catalogue the library of an adventurer apparently killed in a plane crash many years before in the Amazon, eventually travels to the heart of darkness to an appropriate end with a primitive Indian tribe deep in the jungle. The pro-Indian message and the culture clash is laid on a bit thick but the build-up is cleverly handled and the characters, particularly the sister of the explorer and the mysterious Indian with the “snakewrists”, are credible

[Misha Herwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based around Toby's search for an answer to the disappearance of explorer Dexter Parnaby "Snakewrist" deals with the destruction of the Amazon by the white man and the way in which the lives of the native Indians are affected. It also looks at Western romantic views of adventure and derring-do. The novel is an interesting read. Vividly written, the chapters in the jungle are fascinating, in spite of a very unlikeable protagonist.

[Vincent Darkhelm · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as good as it thinks it is. But passably entertaining.