Product Description

When Lieutenant Charles Acland is flown home from Iraq with serious head injuries, he faces not only permanent disfigurement but also an apparent change to his previously outgoing personality.

Crippled by migraines, and suspicious of his psychiatrist, he begins to display sporadic bouts of aggression, particularly against women, especially his ex-fiancee who seems unable to accept that the relationship is over.

After his injuries prevent his return to the army, he cuts all ties with his former life and moves to London. Alone and unmonitored, he sinks into a private world of guilt and paranoid distrust . . . until a customer annoys him in a Bermondsey pub . . .

Out of control and only prevented from killing the man by the intervention of a 250-pound female weightlifter called Jackson, he attracts the attention of police who are investigating three ‘gay’ murders in the Bermondsey area which appear to have been motivated by extreme rage . . .

Under suspicion, Acland is forced to confront the real issues behind his isolation. How much control does he have over the dark side of his personality? Do his migraines contribute to his rages? Has he always been the duplicitous chameleon that his ex-fiancee claims?

And why – if he hates women – does he look to a woman for help?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #231380 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-21
• Released on: 2007-09-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Sunday Telegraph
'Another intelligent, smoothly plotted novel from one of our most interesting crime writers.'

Birmingham Post
'a remarkable, almost hypnotic book that pulls of the incredible trick of making the reader care for disturbed and highly dislikeable people. To do that takes rare skill.'

The Independent
'Walters' imagination is especially good on the fantasies of hatred and revenge engendered by war'

Customer Reviews

Still the queen of the gripping psychodrama, but this one is bad
Minette Walters' novels The Sculptress and The Shape of Snakes were crime classics. In this novel, Walters proves she can still grab readers by the scruff of the neck and make them turn the pages until the end. I couldn't put this book down. However...this was one that ultimately disappointed me, as was her last, The Devil's Feather. All the characters use the same vocabulary/diction. They all say 'PDQ' (pretty damn quick') rather a lot. The young squaddie in his early twenties talks nothing like any young man would talk, let alone a soldier. As in all Walters' novels, there is a gruff character who turns out to have a heart of gold. The solution to the mystery is utterly ludicrous - what the villain does, why he/she does it - it is impossible to take seriously. There is a weapon involved which is extremely rare and unlikely, but everyone seems instantly familiar with it, once it comes to light what it is - no one says, 'What's one of those, then?' Unfortunately, this takes all tension out of the book and makes the ending risible.

I seem to be in a minority...
...Because I have to say I really liked this novel, whereas most of my fellow reviewers seem to have some (no doubt justified) problems with it. So let me quickly explain what I liked: I thought the characters and their emotional state were very well handled. The anger that Charles feels after being blown up in Iraq strikes me as psychologically extremely close to reality. The isolation and personality crisis he suffers are sensitively handled. Of course you could say fair enough but I wanted to read a thriller not a post-traumatic information leaflet. To me, though, the menace, the strange people he has dealings with, the not-knowing which side you're meant to be on, add greatly to the suspense. So in my books, this is a great novel which I think deserves a great many readers.

Not great
Minette Walters is one of my favorite authors. I loved her first four books. After that something happened to her style of writing. I heard her say she wanted to write about politics and didn't want to do straight murder mysteries anymore. Anyway after that I've liked some of her books and others not so much. I have to say I was disappointed by this one. I've had it for months and still only gotten about halfway through it. Since I normally look forward to each of her books and devour them in one sitting that says something. I don't know what it is but I just can't get into it and I keep thinking that it sounds unrealistic and a little silly. It feels like Walters wants to describe a more urban, gritty dark world but maybe she hasn't got that much experience of it and that's why it doesn't work. Denise Mina does the dark underbelly of society much better. That kind of makes me think that Walters should stick to the upper middle class world that she knows instead and that makes me sad because I really want to like her.