The Devil's Feather - Minette Walters

Reuters correspondent Connie Burns was suspicious of John Harwood, a violent misogynist, when they first crossed paths during the Sierra Leone civil war. She was sure he was behind the appallingly brutal rape/murders of five black women but was unable to prove it. Two years later Connie's working from Baghdad when a PR tour of an Iraqi police training centre allows her a glimpse of a man who looks just like Harwood. She learns that he now goes by the name Kenneth O'Connell - from there the trail goes cold, as the spokesman of the private US group leading the training assures her that O'Connell has both identity papers and is no longer stationed there. When Connie persists in trying to track Harwood/O'Connell down she's kidnapped.
Released apparently unharmed three days later, Connie flees to the UK. Fearful for both her own safety and that of her elderly parents, Connie retreats (under an assumed name) to a remote estate near an isolated village in Dorset. Beset on all sides by people who think they know better than her - the dishy local doctor, her concerned parents, her journalist lover/friend/companion still stationed overseas, and the police officer she first discussed the case with - Connie finds a friend in an underdeveloped, reclusive woman who farms a nearby property. But she knows her isolation will serve as no protection - he'll come after her again, and this time he'll go through her parents.
The writing is a combination of first person, news clippings, emails (rarely both original and response, forcing some guesswork), and "extracts from notes filed as 'CB15-18/05/04" - fragments of reflections on (one assumes) Connie's experiences as a kidnappee.
I was a little conflicted about reading Walters again - I loved her early works, which were fresh and interesting, but found later books more formulaic and less engrossing. The final nail was a documentary I (and, coincidentally, Lynn) saw about her several years ago, where Walters came off as the kind of pretentious writer I most dislike (and had previously thought was primarily found among the unpublished). I only bought the 2004-released Devil's Feather because it was on a remainder table and I needed a fifth book to get the reduced rate. Well, that and I felt like I needed to give her another chance because I don't usually think about the author at all so being turned off by a documentary is a bit petty. Plus there's a nice section on another pet hate of mine, that was right on the money:

Her use of "Mummy" was really getting on my nerves. I've never really trusted middle-aged women who choose that diminutive. It suggests their relationship with their mother has never developed beyond dependence, or they're pretending a closer and sweeter relationship that actually exists.

I wouldn't say I don't trust it, but grown adults referring to either parent by a childhood title squicks me out. Of course, I've called my mother by her first name since I was a teen, and my father alternates between his name and Dad, so I'm not exactly normal (in this and in so many other things).
This meeting of the minds was not enough to overcome the other issues I had with the novel, Some of the punctuation was weird, including (and I appreciate the irony given my own fondness for them) an overuse of dashes in some sections: "It was hideously impractical - red wine was a nightmare - and hideously uncomfortable - I couldn't move without barking my shins - but everyone who saw it commented on the designer's flare." I loathe with intensity the use of Random Capitalisation, and part of that family includes random quote marks, an offense committed by Walters: "His habit was to eat 'out', usually at Paddy's Bar." Right. However, my issues with The Devil's Feather are better summed up by Amazon reviewer MD Smart:

The other problem I have with this book, as with all of Minette Walters' recent books, is the amount of repetition in her work. Character types, themes and personal concerns are used over and over again. There's always a tough independent female who can't bear to show her vulnerable side, the square-jawed professional male who has slept with every woman in a fifty mile radius, the obnoxious introvert who is really sensitive and warm-hearted under that protective shell... they're all here, as they are in practically everything else she's ever written. The usual hobbyhorses are here, too: the superiority of rural to urban life, dogs (in this book she tries - and spectacularly fails - to convince us the demonic Bull Mastiff is a sweet and loveable [sic] breed) and smoking (I'm a smoker myself, but even I can't sympathise with the way her characters are always deliberately blowing smoke in non-smokers' faces). Also as usual, the whole book is shot through with conservative, middle-class values, however much the author tries to convince us she's a forward-thinking liberal. Her treatment of working-class characters has always been offensive, and no matter how hard she pretends to disapprove of snobbery, she exhibits all the signs herself. The way she seems to applaud violent revenge and vigilantism in this book is particularly disturbing.

I couldn't have said it better myself. I didn't hate the experience, but I won't be tempted to go near another Walters for quite some time, if at all. - Alex