The Devil's Feather by Minette Walters

What do they say? "Torn from today's headlines comes a story of ... " Minette Walters sets the beginning of the Devil's Feather in Sierra Leone and Baghdad. Connie Burns, a war correspondent for Reuters, encounters a mercenary with a questionable past. Where he goes brutal, misogynistic murders follow. In war, though, how can she know which is the unfortunate cost of war and a destabilized economy and which is a deliberate act of a psychopath.

Burns goes to the mercenary's employer and to the police but the employer is protective and the police helpless. Then she's taken hostage for three days while in Baghdad. In the aftermath she moves to an isolated village in England to recover. That isn't the end and what happened to her in Baghdad is not the only mystery.

I like Walters. She's that odd writer who can write dark novels convincingly and still end in hope. However, it has been awhile since I've set everything else aside and buried myself in a book -- but I could not put this one down. The story is not that unusual, a riff on the woman-in-peril plot. Burns seems, on the surface, not much more than the standard issue heroine. But she's not. Readers, keep your eye on her. Even now, reflecting back, I wonder at Walter's writing and the clues I missed along the way.

Walters also manages to convey the chaos and violence of war in Baghdad and Zimbabwe, takes a shot at the modern day use of mercenaries and the "if it bleeds, it leads" news mentality. While not graphic, I found some scenes (especially the flashbacks to her captivity) uncomfortable.

There is as much mystery in Burns as there is in the plot and it makes for a compulsive read.

~mel