The Devil's Feather: Minette Walters

When five women are brutally raped and murdered in Sierra Leone, Reuters correspondent Connie Burns questions the arrest of three rebel soldiers for the crimes. No-one listens - in a vicious civil wear where hundreds of thousands are killed, the rape and murder of women is of no consequence. And who cares if child soldiers are beaten into confessing? With nothing to go one except her witnessing a savage attack on a prostitute, Connie believes a foreigner is responsible - a man who claims to have been in the SAS and who works as a bodyguard for a Lebanese diamond trader. She remembers him when he was a mercenary of Kabila's Kinshasa regime, and she suspects he uses the chaos of war to act out sadistic fantasies against women. Two years later in Iraq, the consequences of her second attempt to expose him are devastating. Terrified, degraded and destroyed, she goes into hiding in England where she strikes up a friendship with Jess, a reclusive loner. Borrowing Jess's strength. Connie makes the decision to attempt a third unmasking of a serial killer, knowing he will come after her...