With private security firms supplying bodyguards2 in every theatre of war, who will notice the emergence3 of a sexual psychopath from the ranks of the mercenaries?
When five women are brutally4 murdered in Sierra Leone, Reuters correspondent Connie Burns questions the arrest of three rebel soldiers for the crimes. No one listens. In the wake of a vicious civil war that saw hundreds of thousands killed and displaced, the rape5 and murder of women is of little consequence. And who cares if child soldiers are beaten into a confession6?
With little to go on, except her witnessing of a savage7 attack on a prostitute, Connie believes that a foreigner is responsible. A man who claims to have been in the SAS and works as a bodyguard1 to a Lebanese diamond trader. She remembers him from Kinshasa when he was a mercenary for Laurent Kabila's regime, and she suspects he uses the chaos8 of war to act out sadistic9 fantasies against women.
Two years later in Iraq, the consequences of her second attempt to expose him are devastating10. Terrified, degraded and destroyed, she goes into hiding in England and tries to rebuild the person she was before being subjected to three days of conditioning in a Baghdad cellar...
魔鬼的羽毛（典故源自土耳其）——引起男性遐想而不自觉的女人；挑逗性欲的不智之举。
你是否曾经想深深埋藏一个秘密，不让任何人发现？
狮子山有五名女性被残暴杀害，路透社的特派记者康妮·柏恩斯，对三名叛军被指为凶手心存疑虑，但没人把她的话当一回事。在经历数十万人死亡与流离失所的惨烈内战后，妇女被强暴和杀害的案件根本微不足道。即使少年士兵被屈打成招，有谁在乎？谁又会注意到外籍佣兵中，出现了一名性变态狂。
除了亲眼目睹一名妓女遭受野蛮攻击外，康妮几乎没有其他的证据，但她认为一个自称曾在空降特勤队服役过的男子就是凶手。她记得在今夏沙见过他，当时他是罗伦·卡比拉政权旗下的佣兵，她怀疑这名男子趁战乱，对当地妇女实施了强暴。
两年后在伊拉克，她第二次尝试揭发凶手，结果却非常不堪。她拖着受伤破碎的身心，惶惶不可终日的躲到英格兰，却在那和洁思·德比夏结为好友。独来独往的洁思过着隐士般的生活，可能她也隐瞒了许多秘密。康妮在洁思身上发现了共通点，于是借助好友的力量，决定放手一搏，第三度揭发连续杀人凶手的真面目……
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