The Devil's Feather

Starred review from June 12, 2006
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."

July 1, 2006
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 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2006
The title refers to the phenomenon of a woman unwittingly igniting sexual passion in a man; the plot follows a woman's attempts to hide from a sadistic serial killer who has become obsessed with her. At the outset, heroine Connie Burns is a war correspondent for Reuters in Sierra Leone. Five women have been murdered; Burns suspects a British mercenary, but neither she nor anyone else can prove anything. Burns' suspicions are heightened during her 2004 posting to Baghdad, where she is kidnapped and held in a cellar. After being released, Burns, shattered by her ordeal, hides in a cottage in England's West Country, trying to gain some semblance of her former independent self. The novel itself takes a sharp turn from hard-hitting war reporting in the Baghdad section to gothic chiller when the setting switches to England. Barton House, the place Burns chooses to recover, is a spooky, Bronte-like construction, presided over by a strange, lonely woman with a tragic past. Burns, unaccountably drawn to this property when her money and resourcefulness could easily net her a more cheerful place to recuperate, has to deal with post-traumatic stress and the sudden reappearance of the British mercenary. Although the gothic overlay seems a bit artificial, Walters (winner of the Gold Dagger and Edgar awards) really knows how to write convincing, ever-escalating psychological suspense. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)