Product Description

Have you ever wanted to bury a secret so deeply that no one will find out about it?

With private security firms supplying bodyguards in every theatre of war, who will notice the emergence of a sexual psychopath from the ranks of the mercenaries?

Reuters correspondent Connie Burns is no stranger to the world’s troublespots, including the vicious civil unrest in Sierra Leone and the war in Iraq. But as she begins to suspect that a foreigner is using the chaos of war to act out sadistic fantasies against women, her efforts to bring him to justice leave her devastated.

Degraded and terrified, she goes into hiding in England and strikes up a friendship with Jess Derbyshire, a loner whose reclusive nature may well be masking secrets of her own. Connie draws from the other woman’s strength and makes the hazardous decision to attempt a third unmasking of a serial killer . . .

Knowing he will come looking for her . . .

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48173 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-02
• Format: Unabridged
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

Barry Forshaw
Sometimes, an author is obliged to change pace when their usual territory is becoming over-farmed – not least by themselves. And at first glance, The Devil’s Feather would appear to represent a radical new direction for Minette Walters. But -- wait a minute -- why would Walters need to dip into a new genre of novel? After all, she is now unquestionably in the upper echelons of British crime queens, quite as successful as P D James and Ruth Rendell at mining darker psychological territory, with (in her case) a strong sociological underpinning. Such books as Acid Row and Fox Evil have been bitter pictures of Britain as much as they have been crime novels. The Devil’s Feather is more ambitious than any of her preceding work, notably in the massive international canvas (including a war-torn country) that is the novel's backdrop.

Five women have been savagely killed in the Sierra Leone conflict. Connie Burns is a correspondent for Reuters who asks awkward questions about the arrest of three young soldiers accused of the crime. Their forced confessions (after savage beatings) count for little in the middle of the Civil War, and Connie's theory -- that the murders were committed by a foreigner indulging his own sanguinary fantasies in the middle of a war -- proves to be very dangerous for her. Her attempts to track the killer down bring catastrophe on her own head, and she is forced to escape, going to ground in Dorset and dealing with the psychic scars she has been left with. It is, of course, inevitable that she will be tracked down even in the safety of the English countryside by her implacable opponent.

As the foregoing conveys, this is very different territory from that which Walters has made her own, but she proves equally adept at the International blockbuster thriller as at any of her more tightly focused British novels. It goes without saying that the character portrayal (notably of the terrified Connie) is an on-the-nail as ever, and the considerable tension engendered by The Devil’s Feather may glean a whole new legion of readers for Walters. --Barry Forshaw

Richard Godwin, Evening Standard
'once the psycho comes knocking Walters...excels, creating a palpable sense of terror'

Coventry Evening Telegraph and Nuneaton Evening Telegraph
'Minette Walters knows how to make flesh creep with a well-turned
phrase...a gripping page-turner'

Customer Reviews

Not very good
I thought this book was very disappointing. I have read two other books by Minette Walters and they were all better than this one. I think she must be a snob because most of her characters are posh and she is very patronizing to ordinary people. I also dont like the way she dwells on violence as if she is just out to shock. The Sculptress and Dark Room had good stories but this one is very far fetched and the heroine is hard to like. I would recommend reading the new books by Ian Rankin or Ruth Rendell over this one.

Another disappointment from Minette
When Minette Walters first burst onto the scene in the early 'Nineties, she seemed like a breath of fresh air. Her first three books, especially 'The Sculptress', were excellent and her appealing, distinctive style promised much for the future. However, it seems that as her fame and her sales increased, the quality of her writing took a bit of a nosedive. Book number four, 'The Dark Room' was pretty good if rather unconvincing, but 'The Echo' was disappointing and 'The Breaker' absolutely awful. Since then, she has never recovered her early form, and her subsequent books have ranged from passable ('Disordered Minds') to mind-numbingly abysmal ('Acid Row').

'The Devil's Feather' is one of the passable ones, although the beginning seemed to promise more. The book wastes no time in getting to the heart of the story; within forty pages, journalist Connie Burns has unmasked a serial killer (but no one believes her), been kidnapped and abused by him and finally fled to a remote house in the wilds of Dorset to escape him. Of course, we know the killer will eventually come looking for her, and Walters cranks up the tension slowly but fairly satisfyingly. Unfortunately, the long-awaited climax occurs 150 pages from the end of the book, leaving the remainder to clear up a not-terribly-interesting subplot, and the confrontation itself is only described to us in retrospect, thus robbing it of any tension since we immediately know who has survived the encounter. There are also some rather unconvincing shifts in personality and a lot of half-baked psychology which the characters spout to explain their unbelievable actions.

The other problem I have with this book, as with all of Minette Walters' recent books, is the amount of repetition in her work. Character types, themes and personal concerns are used over and over again. There's always a tough independent female who can't bear to show her vulnerable side, the square-jawed professional male who has slept with every woman in a fifty mile radius, the obnoxious introvert who is really sensitive and warm-hearted under that protective shell ... they're all here, as they are in practically everything else she's ever written. The usual hobbyhorses are here, too: the superiority of rural to urban life, dogs (in this book she tries - and spectacularly fails - to convince us the demonic Bull Mastiff is a sweet and loveable breed) and smoking (I'm a smoker myself, but even I can't sympathise with the way her characters are always deliberately blowing smoke in non-smokers' faces). Also as usual, the whole book is shot through with conservative, middle-class values, however much the author tries to convince us she's a forward-thinking liberal. Her treatment of working-class characters has always been offensive, and no matter how hard she pretends to disapprove of snobbery, she exhibits all the signs herself. The way she seems to applaud violent revenge and vigilantism in this book is particularly disturbing.

Perhaps the most surprising example of her repeating herself is the way in which this book is reminiscent of 'The Ice House' in many ways. Isolated females, unfriendly and suspicious villagers, concealed corpses, the mystery surrounding the fate of the central villain ... there are many similarities but I don't want to go into too much detail and spoil the novel for anyone.

I can only hope that Minette Walters takes a break before writing her next book, and tries to rediscover the form which brought her to public attention in the first place. As things stand right now, her formula is wearing very thin.

The Devil's Feather, Minette Walters
Minette Walters, it is entirely reasonable to argue, was the greatest crime writer of the 90's. Her first three novels gained her a unique triple (the CWA First Novel Dagger, the MWA Edgar Award, and then the Gold Dagger) that no other writer has achieved since, and probably never will. The criticial praise rained down fit to drown, and a stunning run of 7 novels followed. Her unique, twisted imagination, effortless writing and plotting, and an awe-inspiring ability to draw characters both normal and fascinatingly damaged at the same time, marked her out as the most exciting new crime writer for years. For a while, though, the spark dwindled. Simple, forced Acid Row lacked the sinister psychological acuity; lengthy Fox Evil was, in the end, messy, and, though a little better, so was even-lengthier Disordered Minds. Readable and enjoyable enough each one, but more preoccupied with awkward and ill-fitting social comment than telling clear and powerful stories, the focus seemed to shift dissatisfyingly.

So, does The Devil's Feather mark a return to form? A bit, yes. It's very hard to gauge what the reaction to this book is going to be, as it's so different from her previous work (one of her admirable qualities as a writer is an absolute refusal to stand still or tell the same story again). It doesn't scale the grand heights of "The Ice House" or "The Shape of Snakes", but it's clearer, more focused and more powerful than anything else she's written in the past four years.

When Reuters correspondent Connie Burns accuses a high-ranking solider of using the confusion of Civil War in Sierra Leone to get away with the brutal murders of several women, she has no clue of the danger she's putting herself in. The man she accuses has a reputation for violence, and several other women have met similarly brutal deaths in other areas where he has been stationed. With little real evidence, her accusations fall through and, after being kidnapped in Iraq, she rushes home to England, fearful and paranoid. Telling no one where she is, she goes into hiding, renting a property in a quiet Dorset village. There, she quickly becomes entangled in the small enmities of the locals, and it seems clear that there are just as many mysteries here as where she's on the run from. And, all the while, Connie knows it's just a matter of time before the volatile man she's accused tracks her down...

Really, this is more of a thriller than a mystery, which is why it's so different from Walters' other novels. There is little mystery to be had, but plenty of the expected psychological depth and jittery suspense (though, there is a great sub-plot involving the real story behind how the house Connie rents came to be free, which she quickly gets involved in, and this provides a nice puzzle for those who want more than just the suspense of the woman-in-peril part). It's also far less messy than a couple of her previous novels: as her last two got longer, the stories got more involved, but here she appears to have reigned herself in, and the result is a far clearer, far tighter and more powerful book, about the effects of abuse and trauma and the way that people cope with them. Too, in The Devil's Feather she seems less determined to pack in social comment. In her early work, she always did it very well on a kind of back-ground level, but lately it's been too obvious, too strained. Clumsy and rather awkward.

Walters has always, always been brilliant at writing about small communities, the rivalries and small tensions, the loyalties and friendships both real and fallacious, the relationships and complexities inherent in them. Her small communities are both microcosms of society and a kind of reversion into our tribal history, seemingly simple and yet in reality endlessly complex, fraught with fractious social difficulty and personal self-advancement, and they allow her to explore the entire spectrum of human relationships in a very effective way. Here, there is no dwindling of that ability. She's right back on form with her characters, too: Connie Burns is in the vein of all Walters' great protagonists: damaged but with a determined strength to survive, resourceful and dogged, likeable but frustratingly human. Reclusive and introverted Jess Derbyshire, the young farmer Connie befriends whose family died years ago in a car accident, is a fascinating and enigmatic triumph. She is possibly the strongest part of the novel.

The writing, as always, is subtle, clear, and has a flow that makes the reading seem deceptively effortless. As with most of Walters books, this one will continue to reward even on a re-read. There are one or two awkward and sudden shifts, both temporally and in terms of plot, when she jumps the story on with emails and letters between the characters (a device I normally like a lot), which surprised me and jerked me out briefly (Walters has never fallen in that particular trap before), but they don't have too much of an adverse effect: Walters' ability to direct her story right back on track prevents that.

So different is this from her previous work that it's hard to know what fans will think of it. It's not a patch on her greatest work, still, but in my mind it's an exciting, satisfying novel that contains more of the strengths of her early work than it does the more recent weaknesses.