Handling Snakes in Crime Fiction

The practitioners of snake handling have always fascinated me. Not in a “I’d like to try that” kind of way, but in a “why would they do that” kind of way.

When a star of the reality television show “Snake Salvation” (which I’ve never seen) — a man described by NPR as “a 42-year-old Pentecostal preacher and third-generation snake handler from Middlesboro, Kentucky” — died this weekend from a snake bite, it caused me to wonder again.

If you’re at all interested in the strange world of snake handl...