The Devil's Feather - Minette Walters [142]
“It would make me no better than MacKenzie.”
Alan took a sip from his teacup and eyed me over the rim. “Do you know Friedrich Nietzsche’s quote about being corrupted by evil? I have it pinned to a board above my desk. Simplified, it says: ‘When you fight with monsters take care not to become one yourself.’ It’s a warning to all policemen.”
I nodded. “It goes on: ‘If you stare too long into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.’ How would you simplify that?”
“You tell me.”
“When you’re teetering on the brink, step back.”
“And did you?”
“Of course,” I said, offering him a biscuit. “But MacKenzie didn’t. He fell in.”
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MINETTE WALTERS’S best-selling novels have been published in more than thirty countries. She has won the John Creasey and Golden Dagger Awards from the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain, and the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America, as well as the Grand Prix des Lectrices d’Elle in France. She lives in Dorset with her husband and two children.
ALSO BY MINETTE WALTERS
The Tinder Box
Disordered Minds
Fox Evil
Acid Row
The Shape of Snakes
The Breaker
The Echo
The Dark Room
The Scold’s Bride
The Sculptress
The Ice House
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2006 by Minette Walters
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.aaknopf.com
Originally published in Great Britain by Macmillan, an imprint of Pan Macmillan Ltd., London, in 2005.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Walters, Minette.
The devil’s feather / Minette Walters.
p. cm.
eISBN-13: 978-0-307-26605-7
eISBN-10: 0-307-26605-2
1. Foreign correspondents—Fiction. 2. Serial murderers—Fiction.
3. Dorset (England)—Fiction. 4. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PR6073.A444D48 2006
823'.914—dc22 2006041033
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
v1.0
Table of Contents
COVER PAGE
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
MADELEINE WRIGHT AND MARIANNE CURRAN MADE…
BARTON HOUSE
PADDY'S BAR
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
THE CELLAR
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
THE ABYSS
EPILOGUE
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY MINETTE WALTERS
COPYRIGHT PAGE