The Devil's Feather [Paperback]

Thirty-six year old Connie Burns is the protagonist of "The Devil's Feather," a psychological thriller by Minette Walters. Burns, an Oxford graduate born in Zimbabwe, is a war correspondent for Reuters. Her beat includes a number of trouble spots in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. While she is in Sierra Leone writing about the bloody civil war there, she hears that an attacker raped and savagely killed five women in Freetown. One night, she visits a local bar and spots John Harwood, a Scottish-born mercenary with a reputation for misogyny and brutality, and Burns suspects that he may have had something to do with the Sierra Leone killings. Although she has no proof to back up her allegations, Burns runs her suspicions past her colleagues. She has a few unpleasant words with Harwood before she remembers that she previously saw him in Kinshasa, where he was known as Keith MacKenzie. Why has he assumed an alias, Burns wonders?

Two years later, in 2004, Connie is in Baghdad on a three-month assignment. While visiting an Iraqi police academy, she again recognizes MacKenzie, who is now known as Kenneth O'Connell; he is a consultant on restraint and control techniques for a private security firm. When she questions the spokesman of the firm, Alastair Surtees, about MacKenzie/Harwood/O'Connell, Surtees stonewalls her. Following a hunch, Connie tours Iraqi newspaper offices, looking for stories about raped and murdered women. She finds two pieces describing crimes that Mackenzie may have committed. Connie e-mails copies of the articles to Alan Collins of the Greater Manchester Police, who warns her to watch her back. Unfortunately, the warning comes too late. On her way to Baghdad International Airport, she is kidnapped and held for three days before being released. She refuses to discuss her ordeal while in captivity, and severely traumatized, she returns to England.

The rest of the novel deals with Connie's stay in Barton House, a place that she rents in England's West Country. She distances herself from her friends and family, as well as from her boss and lover, Dan Fry. Her only regular contacts are with Jess Derbyshire, a reclusive woman who is brusque, stubborn, and fiercely independent, and Peter Coleman, a local doctor. Connie's greatest fear is that MacKenzie, the man who abducted and abused her in Iraq, will track her down to finish the job.

"The Devil's Feather" is a strange hybrid. It begins as an intense and gripping drama about Connie's courageous pursuit of a vicious killer. Unfortunately, after Connie takes up residence in England, Walters dilutes the novel's power by introducing subplots concerning Lily Wright, the elderly owner of Barton House, her venal daughter, Madeline, and Jess's family history. To her credit, the author skillfully explores such themes as the effects of trauma on the human psyche, how small town life is tainted by petty gossip and vicious rumors, and the need for women who have suffered abuse to take control of their lives. In addition, Minette Walters is a fine descriptive writer with a deep understanding of human nature. However, "The Devil's Feather" gradually loses its focus and ultimately fails to fulfill the promise of its exciting early chapters.

In Baghdad in 2004, thirty six years old Reuters' war correspondent Connie Burns is stunned when she spots British mercenary Keith Mackenzie training Iraqi police. She recognizes the instructor from an assignment in Sierra Leone two years before where she thinks he raped and killed local women. Irate that she plans to expose him, out of control Mackenzie abducts, tortures, and rapes the journalist before freeing her with a warning that he will always be near to provide her a second lesson.

Connie goes into shock unable to tell anyone what Mackenzie did to her. Needing to mentally heal, she returns to her home in rustic Dorset. She makes friends though it is really that her neighbors Dr. Peter Coleman and fellow recluse Jess Derbyshire refuse to allow her to wallow by herself. With their help she begins to regain her self-esteem and equilibrium, hoping to prepare for when Mackenzie using some other name as he has in the past will come to reeducate her.

As always Minette Walters provides an intense psychological suspense thriller that grips readers from the opening moments as the villain takes away a sense of purpose and freedom from the reporter. The tale never slows down as Connie tries to recover mentally from his assault while knowing deep in her soul he is coming for her which keeps readers in a state of anticipation awaiting their showdown. THE DEVIL'S FEATHER is Ms. Walters at her tense writing best.

Harriet Klausner

Reuters correspondent Connie Burns is used to being in the thick of wars and their consequent horrors, but is convinced that the brutal rape and murder of five women in Sierra Leone, is down to a British soldier-of-fortune who goes by various aliases. He is known to be a savage, woman hating brute who kills and mutilates for the sheer pleasure it affords him. Connie is abducted and held prisoner for three days before she is released, unharmed, but is traumatised to the point of incoherent speech and thought. She refuses counselling, as she has been shocked into the very state that her captor wished, that of a shamed, humiliated woman who blames herself for not being stronger. She leases a large house in a small village in an attempt to hide from her tormentor, making the acquaintance of only a small number of the locals who subsequently become drawn into her story and she into theirs. I can see this book becoming a movie thriller with lots of tension and mysterious happenings in the old mansion. It's a great read !!