The Devil's Feather

From Barnes & Noble

To understand why we're such huge fans of British crime writer Minette Walters, check out The Devil's Feather, an almost unbearably intense psychological thriller that tracks the insidious path of terrorism across three continents. The title derives from a Turkish phrase for a woman who unwittingly sparks sexual arousal in a man. Unfortunately, that's just what correspondent Connie Burns becomes to the psychotic mercenary who kidnaps her in Iraq and subjects her to three days of sadistic torture. But, as Connie soon discovers, that's just the beginning of her nightmares! Blessed with a deliciously macabre imagination and scene-setting skills that are positively cinematic (several of her books have been adapted by BBC-TV), Walters has been delivering the goods since her 1992 crime debut, The Ice House. This deftly crafted tale of terror proves she has not lost her touch.

Marilyn Stasio

Although Walters has always depicted malicious gossip and abuse of the elderly as serious social evils, by linking this behavior to the methodical savagery committed in wartime, she takes the suspense novel into new territory.
— The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

British author Walters's harrowing 12th psychological chiller spotlights violent suffering and hard-won triumph for Connie Burns, a 36-year-old Reuters war correspondent who crosses a sadistic mercenary alternately identified as John Harwood, Kenneth McConnell and Keith MacKenzie. When she finds MacKenzie training Iraqi policemen in Baghdad in 2004, she links him to serial killings in Sierra Leone two years earlier. An enraged MacKenzie kidnaps, tortures, rapes and releases Connie, who is then too traumatized to coherently divulge details of her abduction. She retreats to a country house in Dorset, where she puzzles over the troubled past of the house ("a place of anguish") and hesitantly befriends her neighbors, the handsome Dr. Peter Coleman and Jess Derbyshire, a reclusive young woman who helps Connie heal from her ordeal. While she gradually recovers, she also lives with the surety that MacKenzie will come after her again. Walters (Disordered Minds) delivers an intense, engrossingly structured tour de force about survival and "the secret of freedom, courage." (Aug.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

War correspondent Connie Burns has seen a lot of violence and depravity in her career, but a volatile British mercenary scares her more than assignments in Iraq and Sierra Leone. Suspecting his involvement in the brutal murders of five women, Connie begins an investigation into the hiring of mercenaries. When she senses danger, she tries to flee but is abducted and held hostage for three days before being released. With family, friends, and the authorities concerned about her silence on the kidnapping, Connie retreats to the English countryside to recover from debilitating panic attacks. In Dorset, she fears her abductor will find her again; her abrasive neighbor and the local doctor try to allay her fears, but Connie knows she isn't safe. She keeps encouraging a long-distance investigation into the mercenary; at the same time, she finds a mystery in the past of her rented house. Walters (Disordered Minds) successfully keeps the suspense high, using a complex structure that parsimoniously releases the details of Connie's abduction and eventual confrontation, though readers may still have questions at the end. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/06.]-Devon Thomas, Chelsea, MI Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Have current events finally caught up with Walters's unremittingly brutal imagination? The latest of her masterful psychological thrillers (Fox Evil, 2003, etc.) examines the effects of terrorism as it ranges from Baghdad to West Dorset. "You'll know not to cross me," soldier-of-fortune John Harwood tells Reuters correspondent Connie Burns when he hears she's accused him of raping and murdering the five Sierra Leone women three teenagers are being blamed for killing. Connie doesn't expect to meet him again, but two years later, while she's covering the Iraq war, she comes face to face with Keith MacKenzie, who's obviously Harwood by another name. The polite insinuations about his past she makes to a spokesperson for MacKenzie's security firm are met with equally polite stonewalling, and she decides it's the better part of valor to retreat to London. But on the way to the airport, she's kidnapped and held captive for three agonizing days before an unexpected release that amounts to a second hell. Because she has no serious visible injuries, she's been let go far sooner than most victims of abduction, and because she refuses to say a word about her captivity, the authorities greet her story with undisguised suspicion. Cut off from everyone but her loving, helpless parents by her panic attacks and inability to come to terms with her violation, she retreats to Barton House, a crumbling rental in Winterbourne Valley. Instead of writing the contracted book about her ordeal, she plumbs the history linking her neighbor, fearsomely gruff farmer/artist Jess Derbyshire, to Lily Wright, the Alzheimer's-stricken owner of the house Jess found collapsed by the side of Lily's fishpond eight monthsago. Though the story of the Wrights and the Derbyshires strangely echoes Connie's own, the real satisfaction here is waiting for that story to conclude with the inevitable return of Keith MacKenzie. Genteel and horrifying as ever, with a particularly unsparing examination of the rage of traumatized victims.

From the Publisher

"Narrator Josephine Bailey, who has won several awards for her distinctive audio performances, perfectly captures all the nuances, fears and emotions of The Devil's Feather." —-Sun-Sentinel