With the possibility of war crimes committed by several American troops still in the public eye, Minette Walters’ new novel about a reporter who stumbles across evidence of a British mercenary committing murder and rape in Sierra Leone and, later, in Iraq – and getting away with it because of world focus on even greater atrocities in the same locations – “The Devil’s Feather” seems like a mystery intent on being politically timely.
But because Walters is a far better writer than that, her new novel is much more, dealing with the timeless theme of victimization – at the hands of brutal killers, society as a whole or even family and friends.
When Reuters correspondent Connie Burns reports on five women horribly raped and murdered in Sierra Leone, her investigations lead her to a man who uses many aliases, including John Harwood, Kenneth O’Connell and Keith MacKenzie. Burns isn’t shocked by his actions because, as she notes in the novel’s second chapter, “If I’d learnt anything from my forays into the world’s conflicts, it was that sadists exist everywhere and war is their theatre.”
Two years later, in 2004, Burns recognizes the same man, training Iraqi policeman. She tries to call attention to the crimes of the mercenary, but no one is interested. In Baghdad, an Iraqi translator advises Burns, “The only thing anyone’s interested in is death by suicide bombing or, better still, acts of sadism on part of the coalition. Women are raped all the time by husbands they never wanted to marry. Does that count?”
Burns finds pieces of her clothing with holes cut out of them; or that her computer screen has been logged on with her password while she was away from her Baghdad apartment. Sufficiently warned and frightened, Burns prepares to leave for home – England – but before she can do so she is kidnapped. Upon her release, three days later, Burns refuses to talk to anyone about it.
Traumatized, in denial and terrified of retribution (if she speaks out about her attacker), Burns returns to England to hide out in the township of Winterbourne Barton.
Once there, she is first greeted at her rental house by a pack of growling dogs and an antisocial young woman named Jess Derbyshire. Wisely, author Walters doesn’t give out the details of Burns’ ordeal right away, letting them leak out bit by bit as the former news correspondent slowly comes to terms with what happened. As she does, Burns also helps Jess confront her own twisted bit of history with Madeline Wright and her mother, Lily, who once lived in the rental house. Together, the two women uncover a familial mystery that will change local history and confront Burns’ personal demon head-on.
With a casual, easy-to-read writing style, Walters is a rare breed: the kind of author who can concoct believable characters and set them down in the middle of entertaining plots that address timeless moral issues.
Dorman T. Shindler is a freelance writer from Kansas City.
—————————————-
The Devil’s Feather
By Minette Walters
Knopf, 368 pages, $24
