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Title details for The Devil's Feather by Minette Walters - Available

The Devil's Feather

A Novel

by Minette Walters
Josephine Bailey
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
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."

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    October 17, 2006

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400123148
      • File size: 304972 KB
      • Duration: 10:35:21

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      A sexual sadist murders five women in Sierra Leone. Connie Burns, Reuters war correspondent, is sure she knows the killer's identity. Years later, she sees him in Baghdad, and then Connie is abducted. After 68 hours, she is released, "unharmed." Connie refuses to talk about her captivity, but her secrecy inevitably overwhelms. Josephine Bailey's powerful performance pulls listeners into Connie's anguish. Bailey's impressive range of accents and a remarkable assortment of voices create a believable (if horrific) scenario. Bailey is a master of subtlety, shading characters with humanity, finessing Connie's terror and self-doubt, and mirroring the searing helplessness that follows total loss of control. Minette Walters's wrenching exploration of survivor guilt, post-traumatic stress, and victim psychology and Bailey's intelligent, restrained reading make this must listening. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      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."

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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