Walters, Minette Books

The Chameleon's Shadow

Minette Walters

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

When British lieutenant Charles Acland returns home from Iraq, his serious head injuries are the outward manifestation of a profound inner change: he may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or it may be, as his psychiatrist suggests, “the prolonged destruction of a personality.”

Though previously well adjusted and known as an extrovert, Acland now withdraws into himself. As he begins his recovery in a dismal provincial hospital, crippled by migraines and suspicious of his doctors, he grows uncharacteristically aggressive—particularly against women, and most particularly against his ex-fiancée. Finally, rejecting medical advice to undergo cosmetic surgery—opting, instead, to accept his disfigurement—and cutting all ties to his former life, he moves to London. There, alone and unmonitored, he sinks into a quagmire of guilt and paranoia—until an outburst of irrational, vicious anger brings him to the attention of the local police: they are investigating three recent murders, all of them apparently motivated by the kind of extreme rage that Acland has exhibited.

Now under suspicion, Acland is forced to confront the issues behind his desperate existence before it’s too late: Has he always been the duplicitous chameleon that his ex-fiancée accuses him of being? Can he control this newly apparent sinister side of his personality? And why, if he truly hates women, does he in the end seek help from a woman—someone as straightforward and self-disciplined as he is unsure and seemingly out of control—to repair the damage to his mind?

In its timeliness, its psychological complexity, and its unstoppable suspense, The Chameleon’s Shadow is a thriller of the first order.

The Tinder box

Minette Walters

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A chilling tale of prejudice, ambition and cunning in which villagers react to a brutal double murderIn the small Hampshire village of Sowerbridge, Irish labourer Patrick ORiordan has been arrested for the brutal murder of elderly Lavinia Fanshaw and her live-in nurse, Dorothy Jenkins. As shock turns to fury, the village residents form a united front against Patricks parents and cousin, who report incidents of vicious threats and violence. But friend and neighbour Siobhan Lavenham remains convinced that Patrick has fallen victim to a prejudiced investigation and, putting her own position within the bigoted community in serious jeopardy, stands firmly by his family in defence of the ORiordan name. Days before the trial, terrible secrets about the ORiordans past are revealed to Siobhan, and the familys only supporter is forced to question her loyalties. Could Patrick be capable of murder after all? Could his parents tales of attacks be devious fabrications? And if so, what other lies lurk beneath the surface of their world? As the truth rapidly unfurls, it seems that Sowerbridge residents need to be very afraid. For beneath a cunning faade, someones chilling ambition is about to ignite

The Devil's Feather (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

Minette Walters

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

"Sadists exist everywhere and war is their theater." 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

In Iraq, war correspondent Connie Burns sees a familiar, troubling face, a man given wide berth years earlier in Sierra Leone, now using a different name, a mercenary training interrogators with dogs. Long-suspecting MacKenzie of perpetrating the brutal serial murders of women in Sierra Leone, Connie begins searching local reports for other such incidents, certain that MacKenzie is still slaughtering innocents under the guise of authority. Before she can confront the man or his boss, Connie is kidnapped and held hostage, released after three days. Traumatized, Connie's response is to flee to the familiarity of the UK, taking a country house in a remote valley, effectively sealing herself off from the world and the experience that has undermined her confidence, leaving her powerless and vulnerable.

It is a reclusive neighbor who recognizes the extremity of Connie's condition. Jess Derbyshire is an outcast in Barton Winterbourne, farming the land owned by her family, who were all killed in a tragic accident, leaving the girl to face life on her own. Indeed, Jess has coped, but on her own terms, her only companions the mastiffs that follow her everywhere. It was Jess who constantly looked in on the owner of Connie's rental, an elderly woman who has been put into care for advancing dementia. There is no love lost between Jess and Madeline, the woman's daughter, but Connie hardly knows what to make of this bitter feud rooted in secrets, Madeline passing on vicious gossip, suggesting Jess' instability. In this setting, Connie struggles with her crushing fears, dreading the memory of those terrible days of captivity and submission at the hands of a monster. Of course, the worst comes to pass, MacKenzie intruding finally on Connie's carefully constructed hiding place, shattering her security and threatening Jess and a local doctor.

As the past rushes in to reclaim her, Connie must confront her demons or suffer the consequences, the lives of her family hanging in the balance. Walters works her magic with this protagonist, exploring the nature of torture and the random violence of war, the psychic damage inflicted by fear and the slow recovery of a mind damaged by absolute terror and the instinct to survive. In the bucolic countryside, evil intrudes and two incredibly resourceful women, as eccentric as any of Walters' characters, deal with the menace that would annihilate them as well as a grueling investigation of disbelieving inspectors. Heroic in the face of adversity, Connie draws strength from her friend and from the rage that has consumed her, reclaiming her place in the world. When violence reaches out from Iraq to the Dorset coast, Connie learns what it means to be a victim and what it means to survive your worst nightmare. Once again, Walters illustrates that terror knows no boundaries. Luan Gaines/2007.

Editorial Review:

A blistering new thriller about the horrors of war and the struggle to survive in the face of pure evil.

Foreign correspondent Connie Burns is hunting a British mercenary that she believes is responsible for the rape and murder of five women in Sierra Leone in 2002. Two years later she finds him training Iraqi police in Baghdad. Connie is determined to expose his crimes, but then she is kidnapped and released after three days of unspeakable torture. Silently, she returns to England and attempts to isolate herself, but it soon becomes apparent that the horrors of the world and her own nightmarish past aren’t so easy to escape from.

The Ice House: A Novel

Minette Walters

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 38 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Best book I have read this year! 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This book has a Elizabeth George flavor but better. The twists and turns of the mystery were wonderful. I understand why this book won so many awards. I can't wait to read more from this Author.

Editorial Review:

Winner of the CWA John Creasey/New Blood Dagger Award

It's been ten years since Phoebe Marbury's husband disappeared from their country manor, Streech Grange, when one afternoon her gardener discovers a decomposed body in the ice house. Now in her mid-thirties, Phoebe shares the manor with two unmarried friends, and the rumors in the village suggest they're up to something--witchcraft, lesbianism, child abuse. Chief Inspector Walsh is eager to find out for himself when he's called to investigate the body. What he discovers is a faceless, contorted corpse and three women who have no interest in helping out the police, and clearly know something they're not telling him.

Minette Walters's first novel gives a raw, contemporary spin to a classic mystery convention, and the result is "splendid . . . an extraordinary debut" (St. Petersburg Times).

The Echo

Minette Walters

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 45 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

That was too much like work :o( 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Minette Walters is a brilliant wordsmith whose plots are always intriguing and complex. But this one is almost ridiculously hard to piece together and follow. Some interesting and believable characters can't save the story from quasi-incoherence.

I finished the book, but immediately wondered why.

Many "misfits" make up the characters 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

A homeless man, Billy Blake, is found dead in the garage of an expensive London home. He died of starvation while leaning against a chest freezer full of food. The police consider it a tragedy, but journalist Michael Deacon smells a story. Deacon acts more like a detective than a writer. He pursues every avenue possible to get to the bottom of this unfortunate accident, determining Billy's name was an alias of William Blake. Deacon thinks it's wrong to think a "man's death was the most interesting thing about him." (pg. 124)

Amanda Powell, the owner of the garage, paid for all of Billy's funeral costs, which raises questions of why? Amanda, deserted by her husband after his embezzlement charges, was also involved in a clandestine affair as was her husband.

During the course of Deacon's investigation he finds the dilapidated warehouse that houses the mentally ill and the addicts/alcoholics. He meets a young man, calling himself Terry Dalton, who, to the best of his ability had tried to take care of Billy.

With the arrival of Terry, the story really picks up. He is a smart-mouthed and very street-wise teenager who has been on his own since he was twelve. He speaks his mind clearly and often gives his opinions. Deacon tells Terry that he can stay with him during the Christmas holiday. Deacon is twice divorced and childless, and he does not want to spend another holiday alone. He also invites Barry from the newspaper, another mistfit, to join them. Barry is a piece of work; he's shady, still lives with his mother, is struggling with his sexuality.

The Echo starts out slowly, but definitely picks up once Terry is introduced. He is not intended to be the leading male--however he is just the type of character that wins your heart over. The Echo is full of offensive profanity and vulgarity that adds nothing to the story--and was intolerable to me. The author, Minette Walters, has eleven other books published, however, in this one, the first half was sooo slow and not very engaging that I'd not seek out any of her other works.

Editorial Review:

Minette Walters's expert plotting and her ability to quickly bring a large cast of characters to life put her in the same arena as Ruth Rendell. A homeless man who called himself Billy Blake is found dead of starvation in the garage of an expensive home near London's Thames, and it looks as though he might be a merchant banker who disappeared in 1988 with 10 million pounds. A magazine journalist named Michael Deacon is intrigued by the case and by the missing banker's wife and soon finds that there are much darker overtones to both. Other Walters books in paperback include The Ice House, The Scold's Bridle.

Disordered Minds

Minette Walters

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 2.5 of 5

Disordered Editing 2 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

You can usually rely on Minette Walters for a seminar on criminally disturbed minds. There's some of that in this novel but it's way, way too long. Ms. Walters introduces us to an interesting character in George (female), a councillor trying to unravel a couple of long-ago murders blamed on a young man with mental disabilities. She teams up with a professor with an enormous chip on his shoulder.

The two of them go off investigating and the book bogs down into hypothesis after hypothesis after hypothesis. It just goes on and on. If it hadn't been a Minette Walters book I would have put it down unfinished, but I kept hoping it was going to click into gear. It didn't.

Where was the editor? The book could have been whacked down to about half its length.

Editorial Review:

When a local councillor and an anthropologist re-investigate the controversial murder conviction of a mentally retarded 20-year-old, they're unprepared for the disturbing facts that come to light--and the personal demons with which they must come to terms.

The Shape of Snakes (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

Minette Walters

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

(4.5) "She had the courage to stand and fight and I ran away." 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Walters pulls no punches in a devastating novel of racism, sexism and misogyny, a young wife witness in 1978 London to the violent death of the only black resident of an all-white, economically barren neighborhood. The police view the battered body and declare the death accidental: Mrs. Ranelagh cries murder. But time and circumstance are against her, neither the authorities nor her husband or mother willing to entertain the possibility. After an outrageous assault on her home and person by incensed neighbors and the rejection of the police (the officer himself a blatant racist), Mrs. Ranelagh and her husband leave London for Hong Kong. Twenty years and two sons later, Mrs. Ranelagh returns, bringing with her years of carefully compiled documents and a private agenda to reopen Annie's case and finally mete out justice to the culprit or culprits responsible. If she harbors a yearning for a bit of revenge as well, who can blame a woman who was treated as an emotional incompetent, ignored by everyone, even her family. Served cold, this dish is piquant.

Walters makes a cogent argument for a woman's place in society in the late 1970s-early 1898s, exacerbated by racial prejudice and male superiority. Given the poverty of Graham Street and the preponderance of council houses, stereotypes abound, Annie an easy target for the bullies anxious to vent. It is Mrs. Ranelagh's evolution that is fascinating, from her delicate mental condition following the murder and the concerted efforts by the locals to make her a victim of the same cruelty they rained on Annie Butts. Her husband's indifference and the local investigating policeman's harassment drive the young wife to the edge, even her overbearing mother contributing to the already burdened woman's nightmare. In spite of everything, Mrs. Ranelagh endures, one of the most interesting relationships with her husband, Sam, who has his own personal guilt to deal with, unable to befriend his wife. That the marriage survives is significant.

Working with a wide array of characters, Walters rebuilds the bleak circumstances of Annie's death, philandering husbands, wife-beaters, child-abusers and other social misfits that inhabit the area. Their parents mired in drink and brutality, the children run the streets, aping their parents for lack of better examples. In this scenario, virtually everyone has a secret, save Mrs. Ranelagh, who bears the weight of neighborhood hostility. Stronger from her ordeal, Mrs. Ranelagh puts everyone to shame with her determination, including Sam, who must take responsibility for his own failings. Literally fearless, the protagonist pursues every avenue, turns over every mud-caked rock and faces the animosity of those involved in a bid to find justice for Annie Butts and respect for herself. Twenty years is a long time to wait to redress the past, but this is an exceptional woman familiar with patience: "If you sit by the river long enough the bodies of all your enemies float by." Luan Gaines/ 2008.

Editorial Review:

A psychological thriller about race, family, and the brutal power of raw emotion.

Mrs. Ranelagh has never stopped thinking about the dead body she found in the gutter twenty years ago, during Britain’s Winter of Discontent. “Mad Annie,” as she was known, was the only black resident of her West London neighborhood and openly despised by the community. The police called her death an accident, but Mrs. Ranelagh has always suspected it was murder. However, her pleas for an investigation were met with a vicious hate campaign that drove her and her husband from the country. Now, determined to uncover the truth, Mrs. Ranelagh has returned to England, where she quickly discovers a sordid trail of domestic violence, racism and adultery that shockingly could lead back to her own family.

The Scold's Bridle: A Novel

Minette Walters

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 42 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A Great Story... 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

The Scold's bridle was winner of the CWA crime novel of the year, and after reading it, there is no doubt in my mind that it is worthy of its accolades. An old, crotchety shrew is found dead in the bathtub. Her wrists horribly slit, pills in her bloodstream, and an antique scold' bridle clasped firmly on her head. A medieval device used to silence nagging women in days of your...All signs point to suicide but for the contraption clamped onto her face, and the protagonist Sarah, her doctor, who said the old woman was emotionally stable. The reader is treated to many twists and turns as the police investigate the small town - only to find out that seemingly everyone had some motive to kill her, as she was entirely dislikeable. Enter the estranged and highly disgruntled family all looking for a share of the considerable family fortune, and you have a sure-fire method of staying up all night waiting for answers.

Read this book for hours of unbridled suspense, but don't do it on a night when you have to get up early, as you won't be going to sleep.

Relic113

Editorial Review:

Winner of the CWA Gold Dagger Award

Dr. Sarah Blakeney is one of very few mourners when her grumpy old patient, Mathilda Gillespie, dies at home in the bathtub, apparently of suicide. The old woman has taken barbiturates, slit her wrists, and bound her head in a rusted contraption called a scold's bridle, a cage with tongue clamps used to torture women in the Middle Ages. The police start to suspect homicide right around the time they learn that Sarah has been generously included in the dead woman's will. When she becomes the prime suspect in the murder, it's up to Sarah to delve into the bizarre details of Mathilda's private life, a history of greed, abuse, and depravity, and uncover the real killer.

The Breaker

Minette Walters

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Total reviews: 59 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The nude body of a 31-year-old woman washes up in a secluded cove on the Dorset coast; at the same time, her 3-year-old daughter is found wandering alone in the streets of a nearby town. The woman, Kate Sumner, was raped and choked before being thrown into the water, and traces of Rohypnol, the so-called date-rape drug, are found in her bloodstream. There are just three suspects in the crime: Kate's husband, William Sumner, a tortured and sexually frustrated man; a handsome, charming but also very disturbed young actor named Steven Harding; and Tony Bridges, a teacher whose friendship with Harding is complicated by jealousy and anger.

Out of these basic ingredients, Minette Walters--the reigning alchemist of the British psychological thriller--has spun another complicated story of passion and repression. In the introduction to the reviewer's edition, Walters says: "Each character is portrayed in depth, and the solution lies in understanding what goes on inside their heads." This is true, up to a point. But what Walters doesn't mention is the sly, slow, and occasionally devious way she doles out the information needed to reach that understanding. You have to weigh the evidence of tidal charts and forensic tests. You must also decide whether the little lies of the characters add up to a big guilt. It's a plausible ending, but you may feel a bit manipulated. Other examples of Walters's alchemy: The Dark Room, The Echo, The Ice House, The Scold's Bridle. --Dick Adler

The Dark Room

Minette Walters

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 39 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

"Fear. It hits me suddenly and I start shivering." 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

A horrendous suicide attempt has landed Jinx Kingsley in the Nightingale Psychiatric Clinic, her body damaged from a nearly-fatal car crash and her mind clouded by the trauma. Unfortunately, amnesia has hampered Jinx's memory of the recent past, other than the knowledge that she has broken off her engagement to Leo Wallader, a miserly opportunist who announced his determination to wed Jinx's best friend, Meg, instead. Currently, the two lovers have repaired to France to wait out the expected family outrage; Jinx remains hospitalized, explaining to suspicious detectives that she has not the temperament for suicide. But facts belie Jinx's adamant declarations, even her doctor, Alan Protheroe expressing disbelief. And no one has heard from Meg and Leo when two beaten bodies are discovered in the woods; it is eventually determined by officials that the slaughtered victims are indeed Jinx's friend and former fiancé. Now Jinx is a murder suspect.

Walters salts her crafty plot with the usual ploys, an eccentric cast and the use of press clippings and police reports. Jinx comes from a colorful family: her father, Adam Kingsley, a self-made man who fought his way up from the streets, a figure who inspires fear in those who oppose him; a drunken, belligerent step-mother, Betty, who cannot compete with Jinx's dead mother; Jinx's two surly step-brothers, Miles and Fergus, spoiled young men who complain constantly and fritter away their days gambling and getting high; Meg's brother, a man of the cloth who sees issues in black and white; and Jinx's deceased husband, Russell, who was bludgeoned to death ten years earlier, his murder still unsolved. Other than Russell, who appears in her nightmares, all the other characters show up in Jinx's hospital room at one time or another, everyone with his own agenda, even the doctor, who wants Jinx to remember for her own safety.

As is usual, Walters mixes unlikely protagonists and a compelling plot, although in this case, most of those involved are either unsavory or unlikable. When the obvious connection is made between Russell's death and the more recent murders, the police, one impassioned detective in particular, fix their sights on Jinx as the clever murderer, not the victim. Indeed, Jinx does hold the key to the mystery, but it is locked in her mind along with confused fragments of memory, leaving her reluctant to share what she doesn't understand. Menace lurks nearby, the doctor attacked on the clinic premises, the case against Jinx growing stronger by the day. But no Walters mystery is predictable, filled with surprises until the end, Jinx suddenly comprehending that she knows the killer very well indeed. Luan Gaines/ 2008.

Editorial Review:

The author of the award-winning novels The Sculptress and The Scold's Bridle weaves a spellbinding tale of suspense and psychological terror. When heiress Jinx Kingsley is found unconscious in the wreckage of a mysterious car accident, the police suspect a suicide attempt. Suffering from amnesia, Jinx is placed in an exclusive private clinic, where she struggles to regain her memory with the help of Dr. Alan Protheroe -- but the memories that begin to surface are terrifying and desperate. A complex, nontraditional British mystery.