The book...so thoroughly fits in with De Palma’s cinematic oeuvre that anyone reading it will feel as if their mind’s eye has suddenly been outfitted with a split diopter attachment ... Fans will no doubt relish all the things in it that they have come to know and love from his films—the caustic, cynical wit, the audacious storytelling, and a wild finale that practically unfolds in slow-motion on the page, in the best possible way.

For lovers of De Palma cinema...a novel that has the twists and turns and snappy pacing of his suspense films...is a treat. For a couple of hours, we get to re-enter...and enjoy De Palma’s wit and sardonic humor The book does read something like a cross between a novel and a movie script, complete with short scenes and quick transitions. Backstory on the characters is supplied as needed, tersely, and the novel’s continual forward momentum carries you along. De Palma’s films, the thrillers in particular, frequently have a dreamlike quality that embraces the absurd and the ludicrous, to most enjoyable effect, and Are Snakes Necessary? is no different ... primarily a potboiler, a blend of thriller and political satire, with women in danger and dangerous women, but it also has just a little bit of thought-provoking heft.

Pitched in style somewhere between a film treatment and tabloid true crime, this debut novel is silly and uneven, sure, but it’s also fun, a pastiche of hard-boiled crime fiction that doesn’t scrimp on the lurid pleasures of the genre ... De Palma and Lehman, while giving their story a conspicuously contemporary setting (Twitter, iPhones, 9/11, Ferguson), have aimed less at modernizing than simply transplanting its styles and tropes to the 21st century. As pastiche, this partly works, but it may have a distancing effect on readers ... Elizabeth de Carlo, the most fatale of the book’s femmes...[has] something retrogressive about her presentation. Perhaps a hint of cool irony can be detected here that some readers will enjoy, but it feels more like an opportunity missed. The book’s chauvinistic dialogue is another sticking point. While it’s obviously an intentional stylistic effect, it feels anachronistic ... Elsewhere, melodramatic overtones threaten to tip some scenes into the absurd ... Still, the chapters zip by with the pace and economy of scenes in a movie, and there are enough good jokes...and plot twists to pass the time guiltily enough.

The good news is that the story’s premise holds water ... Suffice to say all of the characters come together at the end with several interesting twists and unexpected turns, and issues are resolved . . . perhaps not to the best interest of all the characters, and justice may not always be served, but everything is tied up neatly. The not-so-good news is that the writing is messy and difficult to get through. DePalma and Lehman use an omniscient point of view that is authorial in nature. That is, the reader is told what is going on rather than participating in the story and experiencing the characters’ actions. Parenthetical asides abound throughout the story, asides that are either designed to be cute little comments or to inform the reader of what they already know. There is also a lot of second person point of view that slows the pace of what is an otherwise good story premise. DePalma and Lehman use a lot of background that would be better brought forward early in the story. This is another distracting activity that slows the pace ... If the creative writing technique failures don’t bother the reader, they may enjoy the story itself.

Composed of short, punchy prose and bite-sized chapters, this slim genre novel reads very much like a script for a new De Palma project, one that’s rich in the debauched and rarefied play lands of the rich and famous, aspiring photographers (voyeurs), male predators, and beautiful and imperiled women, with a soupcon of political intrigue on top ... This naughty pulp cocktail goes down deliciously easy ... Still, Are Snakes Necessary? also illustrates the limitations of attempting to recapture the visceral qualities of cinema via prose. De Palma and Lehman’s writing is confident, but it still only faintly conjures the wrenching, surreal power of a classic De Palma sequence ... the poetry is missing. De Palma is a maestro of juxtaposition, composition, and performance calibration, not of words on a page.

De Palma and Lehman stuff their book with cinematic tropes, unrealistic characters, and predictable plot twists, but somehow it's still an overall exciting read.

This is a deliciously deceptive novel ... What begins as a Christopher Buckley–style comedy-drama...transitions to a dark thriller in which, as its conclusion approaches, the authors execute some plot twists and revelations that would be right at home in a De Palma movie ... This is a pleasure to read. The tale has dozens of moving parts, each of which must work in perfect synchronization with the others to avoid bringing the whole enterprise to a screeching halt. The writing is nearly pitch-perfect, too: lightly comic in some scenes, darker and more ominous in others ... A wonderful, immensely satisfying thriller.

... disappointing ... A subplot involving a remake of the Hitchcock film Vertigo set at the Eiffel Tower sets the stage for a risible climax. The predictable and tired plot twists aren’t helped by the authors’ portrayal of present-day politics as if the 2016 presidential campaign never happened. This would have worked better as an intentional parody of the genre.