The Devil's Feather
by Minette Walters
Macmillan, $189
I beg you to read this book twice - then let me know if she did it or not.
No one who follows the news will be ignorant of the war in Iraq, the mistreatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison or the kidnapping of female journalists. So this novel's opening events aren't likely to be rejected as unrealistic. Similarly, exposes in recent years about the questionable nature of some newsgathering and the fabrications of some journalists adds piquancy to this account by a female war correspondent of what she says happened to her.
The Devil's Feather has a delightfully ambivalent final section. Gradually, seeds are sown to make us doubt the narrator's account of the final events. Once this happens, everything she's told us becomes questionable. We begin to wonder whether her name, Connie Burns, is a broad tip that she is, in fact, a con.