Reviewed By: Lynn Harnett
The Devil's Feather
Amazon US HC Amazon UK PB Amazon UK HC Amazon Canada HC
Minette Walters
Class/Genre: Mystery
Knopf
While Edgar winner Walters’ psychological thrillers (in the Ruth Rendell vein) are among my favorites, this is her weakest effort to date. British war correspondent Connie Burns recognizes a sadistic mercenary while on assignment in Iraq. She had run into the man while in Sierra Leone two years earlier and, based on his reputation for brutality towards the native prostitutes, suspected him of the vicious murders of five women.
Though nothing came of her suspicions, she immediately resumes her digging when she spots him in Iraq under a different name. His employers stonewall her investigation and shortly thereafter she is abducted, then released after three days. Though she refuses to discuss her ordeal we know who grabbed her and as the book proceeds nothing about her horrible experience comes as a surprise.
Traumatized, she holes up in an old house in Dorset (where Walters lives), suffers panic attacks and edgily befriends a taciturn local woman who as a teenager lost her family in a car crash. The predictable stalking by the kidnapper overshadows the subplot concerning this woman and the elderly owner of the Dorset house, while the protracted ending is first, not credible, and second, way too talky. A major disappointment.
Lynn Harnett
Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Lynn Harnett
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