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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 7, No. 38 |
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MINETTE WALTERS' THE DEVIL'S FEATHER |
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England's Walters returns
to top form with 'Feather'
of TheColumnists.com
Lately I'd been feeling England's Minette Walters had been stuck in a rut and was beginning to lose momentum as the obvious heir apparent to P.D. James and Ruth Rendell as England's new "queen of mystery."
Happily, she seems to have popped out of that rut with her latest novel "The Devil's Feather" (Knopf, $24). It has all the assets of her great ones--an absorbing mystery plot, very real-life-like characters and a stirring of relevant themes for today's readers.
This time Walters once again rips from the headlines to find her plot material: Her heroine, Connie Burns, is a foreign correspondent covering the war in Iraq, who's taken hostage, presumably by terrorists, but is released after only a few days, apparently unharmed. She refuses to talk about her ordeal and, instead, rushes off to England, where she finds a house in a very rural area and starts building a new life there--under a false identity.
What's going on? Did she fake the kidnapping to generate a "big story" for herself, only to have the whole thing backfire on her, wrecking her career? Or did something truly horrifying happen during those few days as a hostage--something so bloodcurdling that she may spend the rest of her life trying to hide from the demons that now infest her mind?
Walters is a master of this sort of psychological thriller, steeped in mystery. If you remember her earlier masterpiece, "The Sculptress," which became a riveting TV movie shown on PBS' "Mystery!" in the 1980s, you'll be aware that she's not afraid to mess with the mind of her protagonist, especially after dragging a number of rather ripe red herrings across the proceedings.
This is no exception. Before going to Iraq, Connie Burns had been a Reuters correspondent in Africa. She worked on the story of the brutal rape-murders of five women in Sierra Leone. She knew who a prime suspect was in what clearly were murders by a serial killer. Naturally, she's shocked to find that same suspect working in Iraq, but under a false identity.
While trying to check the man's identity without him knowing about it, Connie also attempts to find out if any murders similar to the ones in Sierra Leone have been committed in Baghdad. Though the law and order system is in chaos there, she does identify several unsolved murders that look like the work of her man.
But then she's kidnapped before she can blow the man's cover. Did the serial killer catch her scent on his trail and kidnap her, throwing suspicion on the insurgents? Did he attempt to turn her into a "devil's feather"--his sexual plaything--before killing her? If so, why was she suddenly released unharmed?
With all these mysteries swirling around her, Connie wants to bury herself in the rural English countryside. Instead, she finds herself a central player in a local mystery involving the ownership of the once great estate she has rented.
Ultimately, though, we find Connie alone in a creepy old manor house, possibly being stalked by one of the most vicious serial killers of modern times. Her only allies are the local doctor, a rather ineffectual "action hero," and Jess, a middleaged neighbor woman who lives a hermit-style life with her pack of vicious mastiffs and is rumored to be a lesbian.
If I have any carping to do about "The Devil's Feather," it may be the fact that Walters leads us into an incredibly tense climactic showdown--then tells us what happened during this cliffhanger moment in a series of flashbacks. It squanders much of the suspense--and yet you're almost at the end of the novel and there's no way you're going to stop reading. Everything works out fine, but I'd have preferred a different mounting of the final showdown.
Walters and Scotland's Val McDermid may be emerging as the successors to James and Rendell, who are still doing very good work despite their advancing years. McDermid has been working at top form right along and, with "The Devil's Feather," Walters certainly polishes her reputation enough that serious critics can't possibly overlook her ever-brighter glow.
©2006 by Ron Miller. The book cover illustration is courtesy of Knopf. This column first posted Nov. 13, 2006
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
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