Where Serpents Lie
What novelist T. Jefferson Parker does so well inWhere Serpents  Lie(and in such  previous high-octane outings asLaguna  HeatandPacific  Beat) is to bind his  characters tightly to the territory in which they live and die--the mostly  scorched and urbanized but  occasionally still pristine turf of Southern California's Orange County. When  he's not running the Crimes  Against Youth unit at the Orange County Sheriff's Department, Terry Naughton  sits in a cave in Laguna  Canyon, drinking tequila, smoking cigars, and trying to understand the twisted  mind of a particularly  vicious child molester called The Horridus. The serpents of the title are real,  as is the terror Parker manages  to evoke with the intense power of his writing. "I knew that there was no  way that Lauren would ever  have her childhood replaced with a better one," Naughton says about a 9- year-old girl sold for sex by  her parents. "Lauren had the resigned eyes and the aura of passive  invincibility found in nearly all  children who have escaped to the last place they can go--to the private, silent  cave of their own  selves."--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.