The shape of snakes: "November 1978. Britain is on strike. The dead lie unburied, rubbish piles in the streets - and in West London a black woman known as Mad Annie dies in a rain-soaked gutter. Her passing would have gone unmourned but for the young woman who finds her and who believes - apparently against reason - that she was murdered. For something passed between Annie and Mrs Ranelagh at the moment of death."--Back cover. Acid row: "Is the name of the beleaguered inhabitants give to the place they live. A no-man's land of single mothers and fatherless children where angry, alienated teenagers control the streets. Into this battleground comes Sophie Morrison, a young doctor visiting a patient in Acid Row. Little does she know that she's entering the home of a known paedophile. And with reports circulating that a tormented child called Amy has disappeared, the viglantes are out in force."--Back cover.