The Devil's Feather: A Novel [Audiobook, CD, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Minette Walters (Author), Josephine Bailey (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 17, 2006

In each of her ten critically acclaimed and hugely popular novels, Minette Walters has explored the dark terrain of the human psyche to give us thrillers of exceptional psychological complexity and suspense. Now, in The Devil's Feather, she gives us her most unexpected and electrifying novel yet.In 2002, five women are discovered barbarously murdered in Sierra Leone. Reuters Africa correspondent Connie Burns suspects a British mercenary: a man who seems to turn up in every war-torn corner of Africa, whose reputation for violence and brutality is well-founded and widely known. Connie's suspicions that he's using the chaos of war to act out sadistic, misogynistic fantasies fall on deaf ears-but she's determined to expose him and his secret.The consequences are devastating.Connie encounters the man again in Baghdad, but almost immediately she's taken hostage. Released after three desperate days, terrified and traumatized by the experience-fearing that she will never again be the person she once was-Connie retreats to England. She is bent on protecting herself by withholding information about her abduction. But secluded in a remote rented house-where the jealously guarded history of her landlady's family seems to mirror her own fears-she knows that it is only a matter of time before her nightmares become real. With its sinuous plot, its acutely drawn characters, and its blistering suspense, The Devil's Feather keeps us riveted from first to last. It is a dazzling reminder of why Publishers Weekly has dubbed Minette Walters "Agatha Christie with the gloves off."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. 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 © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker

In this uneven but scary thriller, Connie Burns, a white Zimbabwean war correspondent for Reuters, investigates five gruesome murders in Sierra Leone and follows a hunch, convinced that a British mercenary is using the mayhem of war zones to disguise his taste for raping and killing women. After a mysterious assailant kidnaps her and holds her prisoner for three days in Iraq, she becomes convinced that her quarry is now hunting her. She flees to Dorset, rents an isolated house that turns out to have a troubled history, and is befriended by a reclusive neighbor who, some years before, lost her entire family in a car crash. Given the ultra-contemporary world of the early part of the novel, the scenes in Dorset, where the author herself lives, seem parochial, but this does not lessen Walters's ability to use horror-movie logic to terrifying effect.
Copyright © 2006 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Tantor Media; Unabridged,Library - Unabridged CD edition (October 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400133149
• ISBN-13: 978-1400133147
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 6.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,432,605 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "When you're teetering on the brink, step back.", September 4, 2006

By 

E. Bukowsky "booklover10" (NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Devil's Feather (Hardcover)

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.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars intense psychological suspense thriller, August 24, 2006

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Devil's Feather (Hardcover)

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

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Submission by humiliation, August 22, 2006

By 

Beverley Strong (Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Devil's Feather (Hardcover)

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 !!