Having been disappointed in her previous book The Devil's Feather, in which I found her personal political views too intrusive, the Chameleon's Shadow was much more enjoyable. Walters stuck more to what she is good at- namely keeping us in suspense until the last minute, but giving us plenty of subliminal information to figure out the culprit for ourselves.

Through the first few chapters of this new novel from Minette Walters, the main character, Charles Ackland, irritates everyone--his nurses, his family, the reader. He's been horribly injured in Iraq and will never be "normal" again, a fact that his psychologist tries to prepare him for. But when he becomes a suspect in a series of murders in London, nothing is clear, and guilt seems to darken every corner. Walters maneuvers through a tricky plot with fascinating characters who are so unlikely as to be totally believable, and comes down to a smart and unexpected ending. Great stuff.

British Lieutenant Charles Acland, facially disfigured by a roadside bomb in Iraq, the two other men in his command killed, finds himself subject to uncontrollable rages as he slowly regains his memory and begins to heal. Impulsive attacks on his mother and ex-fiancée, as well as noticeable hostility towards women in general have earned him the close attention of psychiatrist Robert Willis.

Despite Acland's terse replies and willful resistance, Willis persists, introducing him to a female colleague in London (whose chatter drives Acland nuts). Living ascetically and eating little, Acland keeps to himself in a rented room until he's arrested for an assault on an elderly man.

Though the old man escaped death, the assault is clearly related to three earlier murders of men who were gay or bisexual and ex-military. A little delving and the police find Acland a perfect fit for the crimes. Luckily for Acland they don't have any evidence and he does have a few friends, among them a smart, no-nonsense, butch-lesbian weight lifter doctor, Jackson, who takes him in and puts up with a lot. In less capable hands Jackson would be one of those gruff, heart-of-gold clichés that form the bedrock of lazy, feel-good movies, but Walters can handle her and even make us believe.

Acland, too, grows as the novel develops, exposing vulnerabilities and a strong ethic along with a truly sinister side that makes him just a bit scary and unpredictable. Not Walters' best, but an absorbing read from one of Britain's top crime writers.

As the story begins you have the British officer Charles Aceland who endures a tragic accident while on duty. The significance of his injury is played up throughout the book but yet doesn't quite make the reader very suspicious of him. There are murders that are trying to be solved and you never really know who is telling the truth, you have a feeling that you really don't know who the hell was responsible but like any normal mystery it is usually the person that you hear talked about the least.

As I was reading the book there never really was a point where I felt compelled to not stop reading. The book was suspenseful but yet when each character gave their spill about what they think had happenend you were almost bored by their anwsers since you were mostly in la la land the entire time and had not even the slightest clue as to who was the killer or responsible for anything. Usually you have a gut feeling that tells you who the killer might be which keeps you hopeful but this book did no such thing. And some of you may say well thats what makes it a great mystery, and yes that would make it a great mystery, but the events leading up to the discovery of each part of the mystery wasn't riveting enough for my tastes.

I also felt as if their was really no climax or at least a climax where I am just on the edge of my seat and then shocked. The book was an ok read but not near as much of a thriller and excitment as other readers have commented.

This is yet another great novel from the best author of psychological mystery there is. Walters does here what she does best, builds superior character studies of deeply flawed and ambiguous protagoinsts while giving tidbit after tidbit of information about the actual mystery and then resolving that mystery in an entirely believable, yet satisyingly complex way. She also leaves both the protagonist, and the reader, with a satisfying conclusion where total despair is replaced with at least a modicum of hope. This is a must read for anyone who wants a stunning, albeit dark, psychological thriller.

A British Iraq vet, Lt. Charles Acland, is recovering from serious head injuries received in a roadside bomb attack, when his newly emerging personality puzzles first his psychiatrist and then the London police when deadly attacks on several men coincide with his being nearby. Since Charles is now prone to violence and migraine-induced rages, those who at first support him begin to have their doubts about what he is hiding from them in regard to his prior relationship with a manipulative, coke-loving fiancée and in his new relationships with a couple of suspicious, evidence-toting homeless guys. The `new' Charles does himself no favors by continuing to be recalcitrant and closemouthed. He is semi-adopted by a masculine lesbian doctor, who offers him a place to crash and then begins to piece together both the reality of Charles' life and, in turn, to help the police in their investigation on Charles' behalf. A pretty good read - Walters can balance all the skeins she weaves so that information comes to us as it should - no obvious giveaways, but a steady growing connection of facts that lead us and the law to the perpetrators. Charles' struggle to deal with who he was before his accident and who he is now is only dealt with in relation to the case at hand, so his character, who understandably remains an enigma for the sake of the mystery, remains, in the end, just a sketch.

In the novels of Minette Walters, you seldom know who is telling the truth, and this queasy uncertainty propels her mysteries. In "The Chameleon's Shadow" a wounded Iraq War veteran named Charles Acland comes home with serious head injuries, a horribly disfigured face and a volatile, unpredictable rage, especially against women. After physically healing, he refuses cosmetic surgery and goes to London, where he immediately becomes a suspect in a series of brutal murders, thanks to a violent bar brawl and his occasional bouts of extreme aggression, which his ex-fiancee insists are nothing new. Is Acland's scary behavior the result of post-traumatic disorder from the war, or a symptom of what his ex-fiancee calls his chameleon-like personality? And do the two homeless people Acland befriends, one a middle-aged drunk and the other a teenage runaway, know more about the murders than they're saying? With chilling psychological acuity, Walters dissects her subjects against a backdrop of troubling current events. In the process, she's created one of the darkest thrillers of the year.
Also recommended: A Stranger Lies There - this mystery won the Malice Domestic Award for best first mystery, and earned "two thumbs way up" from the other major online bookseller's Editorial Review.

THE CHAMELEON'S SHADOW opens with glaring headlines announcing the brutal beating deaths of "Martin Britton, a 71-yr-old retired civil servant [and] Harry Peel, a 57-yr-old taxi driver." If the murders are connected, the only common links so far are their homosexual activities and the fact that they lived alone. Another possible but tenuous tie is their associations with prostitutes of both sexes.

As the narrative unfolds, readers meet Lt. Charles Acland, the former driver of a three-man Scimitar "reconnaissance vehicle that is part of a convoy [traveling along] part of the highway that linked Bosra to Baghdad." They could not know that "four Iraqis...crouched in the upper story of an abandoned roadside building...[had them in their sights with] long-range binoculars." By the time Lt. Acland realizes that something in their path doesn't look right, "it was too late. The roadside bombs, a collection of anti-tank mines rigged to produce [an enormous] blast detonated simultaneously as the vehicle passed between them." Two of the soldiers die, but Acland survives the explosion.

"Lt. Charles Acland sustained serious head and facial injuries during the attack...the patient's injuries suggest brain damage likely." One side of his face, including his eye, has been burned away. The doctors in the field hospital do what they can for his wounds. Then he is repatriated back to England where his physical and psychological damage can be treated. No one knows what his future will be, and he will have a long and painful stay in the South General Hospital, Birmingham, UK.

When he awakens from his coma, he is completely disoriented, terrified, subsumed in pain, angry, confused, suffering from acute post-traumatic stress disorder --- and has gone through a personality change so dramatic that he himself doesn't recognize who he is or was. In the hospital he gets fine psychiatric care from a very sympathetic Dr. Willis, who goes so far as to contact Jen, the former fiancée, to see if she can help by telling him anything about Acland. She is only too happy to share her opinions of her former lover: "Charlie is a chameleon. He projects different images to different people. With his regiment, he is a man's man; with me he's a woman's man; with his parents he clams up and pretends he's not there."

After this interchange, Dr. Willis finally admits that Acland is not helping in his recovery and concludes that he doesn't remember exactly what happened in Iraq, except perhaps survivor's guilt. "Willis talked about alienation and social withdrawal...a blunt appraisal of how isolation could lead to...[obsessing] about single issues --- usually people or topics that made him angry." Acland responds only to the last issue: "You're making me nervous, Doc." And in the wake of the information about the danger his hermit-like behavior put him in, he places a call to his parents. But "he found it easier to show no emotion at all, which was a truer reflection of now he felt, for without the means to demonstrate joy or empathy, the sensations themselves seemed to have withered and died."

Nevertheless, Dr. Willis agrees to release his patient as long as he stays with a psychiatrist who owns a bed and breakfast and can keep an eye on him. Acland is told that he is going to have to work on his self-control as he meanders through the twists and turns of his dark journey "back to the world." He doesn't stay at the B&B and ends up on the street going from pillar to post. His twisted and convoluted perceptions of people and events propel him into an emotional downward spiral, reinforcing his desire to be alone to think.

Acland works his way to London and finds out just how much he has changed. He is sitting at the bar in a pub when a Pakistani touches him with a finger to get his attention. He goes berserk and easily could have killed the man without a second thought. But the half-partner in the bar, a very large and strong weightlifting lesbian named Jackson who is also a doctor, breaks up the fracas. She has empathy for Acland despite his cold and secretive demeanor.

Acland despises all women. He hates his mother, as well as former fiancée Jen, who strolls into his hospital room uninvited. They argue, and Acland keeps telling her to leave for her own safety. But she is a stubborn narcissist who bears a resemblance to actress Uma Thurman and believes her looks will conquer any man. She pushes him too far and is lucky to be able to walk out of the facility alive. He barely tolerates the touches of the nurses in the hospital, and his temper is triggered if anyone puts a finger on him, even in jest. She tries and tries to reach Acland, who lives above the pub for a little while, but he ends up taking to the streets and roams for miles and miles.

At the same time, the "gay killer" is still at large, and the police are ready to pin the murders on almost anyone. When an old soldier, a "man of the streets" for decades, is beaten up, Acland is a likely suspect. Ironically, he relies on Jackson, who ignores his rudeness and dark personality, to help him. But Acland has lost the ability to make connections that are warm and human.

As the narrative moves from inside Acland's head, his migraines, his post-traumatic stress, his self-imposed starvation and his overwhelming need to be alone, the pacing becomes more intense and remains realistic. In an interview, Minette Walters says, "This is a book about anger...it's difficult to understand at the beginning why [Charles Acland] is so angry and as the book unfolds you begin to understand...but there's a lot of other anger in the book...which isn't to say it's a completely bleak novel..."

She goes on to say: "There are two very strong characters in the story who build a relationship --- there's Charles Acland himself, who's the injured soldier, and there's Jackson, who's a doctor who tries to help him. As ever in my books, I've got two stories, really, running parallel with each other, but they are linked in a very strong way..."

Walters has a reputation for building suspense without it being contrived. The themes for which she is famous are focused on psychological acting out and/or relationships between characters. She also limns characters who are believable, acting and communicating in ways that suit their personalities. She sustains the tension and suspense to the final sentence of THE CHAMELEON'S SHADOW. Readers are left to ponder if Acland is a serial killer, or an unfortunate young man who came back from fighting in Iraq as a "dead man walking."

--- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum

On 24 Nov 2006 the convoy drives the highway that links Basra and Baghdad led by a Scimitar Reconnaissance Vehicle when roadside bombs explode. The destruction of the RV became a top DVD seller in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. However, the commander of the RV, British Army Lieutenant Charles Acland survived the blasts with facial and brain injuries; everyone else inside died. Two days later the Light Dragoon Guards' officer is flown unconscious to Birmingham, England to begin reconstructive surgery of his disfigured face.

Back home, Charles is filled with rage especially towards women, and rejects the facial surgery, but initially accepts the psychological treatment offered by Dr. Robert Willis. Charles is incredibly angry at his former fiancée Jen Morley who insists even before his war trauma he was a chameleon. To her he was a woman's man; to his unit and his male friends he was a man's man; to his mom he was the adoring son. Charles abruptly moves to London at about the same time a serial killer is murdering people. He remains reclusive and angry yet accepting. His rage at Muslims leads to a brawl in a bar with Pakistani-English and a rescue by a three hundred pound female lesbian weight lifter Dr. Jackson and the bar's owner Daisy, who try to help him afterward.

This is an interesting look at Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in which the medical profession is unsure of whether Charles' injuries changed his personality especially since Jen convinces them he hid his killer instincts behind a nice guy chameleon. Charles seems genuine and his two female saviors also, but it is the plot focused on whether he is a serial killer or not that grips readers. Although a late spin that answers the question of is he seems off kilter, fans of Minette Walters will enjoy this psychological thriller.

Harriet Klausner

As Minette Walter's "The Chameleon's Shadow" opens, twenty-six year old British Lieutenant Charles Acland and his men are patrolling the Baghdad to Basra highway in an armored reconnaissance truck. Suddenly, several roadside improvised explosive devices produce a blast that demolishes their vehicle. Charles, the sole survivor, is horribly disfigured and has lost an eye. When he wakes up in the hospital, he has no memory of the tragedy. A psychiatrist named Dr. Robert Willis comforts the devastated soldier and tries to help him come to terms with the calamity that befell him and his men, as well as with his future as a partially blind and mutilated veteran.

Charles's behavior in the hospital is troubling. He refuses to answer simple questions, swears at his nurses, declines the proffered pain medication, and evinces a visceral and generalized anger especially towards women. Although he makes a remarkable recovery physically, his face is damaged beyond repair and he suffers from severe migraines. He is cold to his parents and seems to suffer from deep-seated feelings of inadequacy and guilt. He claims that he is indifferent to his narcissistic ex-fiancée, Jen Morley, with whom he broke up shortly before he shipped out to Iraq. Charles appears to be incapable of normal social interaction; he lives like a "self-denying ascetic," eating little and exercising compulsively.

Meanwhile, a series of killings in London has the police baffled. Three men, all army veterans, aged fifty-eight, fifty-seven, and seventy-one, were robbed and brutally beaten to death by a frenzied attacker. Detective Superintendent Brian Jones, who heads up the investigation, and his second-in-command, Detective Inspector Nick Beale, believe that the victims knew their assailant. After Charles almost kills someone in a pub fight, he is restrained by a huge woman named Jackson, who is built like a Mack truck, with close-cropped hair, bulging muscles and biker boots. Jackson is a gay and a doctor. Her partner, Daisy, runs the pub that they both own. This formidable woman becomes Charles's unlikely friend in spite of his prickliness and ingratitude, and in many ways, she saves his life. She not only gives him a place to stay, but also uses her own peculiar brand of "tough love" to shape him up and earn his trust. "She's incapable of mollycoddling anyone, tells it how it is, refuses to tiptoe around prissy sensibilities, and gains respect as a result." Later, an elderly pensioner named Walter Tutting is viciously assaulted but survives; since he had argued with Tutting earlier at an ATM machine, the police pick Charles up for questioning.

"The Chameleon's Shadow" is a psychological thriller about the dark impulses that drive people to commit heinous acts. Charles Acland is scarred both psychologically and physically, and he harbors profound antagonism, especially towards women. However, is he capable of killing someone in cold blood? Jackson, for one, has her doubts. Walters introduces some additional key characters, both homeless, as the story progresses: One is a sixteen-year-old runaway named Ben Russell and the other is a middle-aged drunk known as Chalky. These two individuals may know more than they're willing to admit about the serial killer who is targeting middle aged and elderly men. The police, with Jackson's help, do everything they can to get to the bottom of a case that is as bizarre as any that they have ever seen.

Minette Walters is a gifted storyteller and she garners sympathy for the emotionally wounded protagonist. Although the first half of the book is gripping and suspenseful, it falters at the end, when it becomes a bit too weighed down with coincidences and psychobabble. A few far-fetched twists and turns enable the author to wrap up her complicated plot a bit too neatly. In spite of its flaws, "The Chameleon's Shadow" is an engrossing and affecting tale of an injured soldier's horrific journey to hell and back.

Minette Walters is England's bestselling crime writer, and her new novel shows us why. It is a gripping, sometimes shocking mystery that reveals much more than the identity of the killer. As with her best earlier titles (THE ICE HOUSE, THE SCULPTRESS, THE SCOLD'S BRIDLE, etc.), Walters manages to make some important points about the world around us while engrossing us in a terrific thriller.

Lt. Charles Acland is a young man who has been horribly disfigured in the Iraq War. Back in London, his promising military career at an end, he is one of the lost, the "other" victims of war, attempting to readjust to civilian life in a society that has no use for him. His physical disability is accompanied by psychological trauma, manifested by sudden, violent rages, migraine headaches, and an inexplicable aversion to women. Meanwhile, London is being plagued by a series of brutal murders of gay men. When these two stories intersect, the suspense really begins. Acland is considered a suspect by the police, and the doctors who have been working with him are unable to explain his odd behavior. A chance meeting with an unusual woman doctor--an enormous, bodybuilding "butch" lesbian who also happens to be the most sensible character in the story--paves the way for a solution to the mystery and the possibility of Acland's salvation.

As always, Minette Walters has more on her mind than a simple murder mystery. THE CHAMELEON'S SHADOW is a fascinating, compulsively readable novel about crime, unlikely friendship, and the real, lasting horrors of war. Acland's scars make him one of the statistics, the "acceptable losses" of military personnel in conflict. In this exciting mystery, Walters eloquently proves that there's nothing acceptable about it. Highly recommended.

His vehicle destroyed by an IED, Lt. Charles Ackland barely survives the explosion, the two soldiers with him in Iraq killed immediately. Half of his face irreparably damaged, Ackland lies in his hospital bed in London, his face split between horrible scarred and virtually untouched. Gradually awakening from a coma and his traumatic injury back in England, Ackland's world is changed forever, a young man with an uncertain future. Although he harbors hopes of returning to duty, Charles' recovery will be agonizingly slow, requiring a series of operations that may not significantly alter the damaged side of his face or return sight to a blind eye. There are other disturbing signs as the wounded soldier rejoins the world: impatience, an easily-roused temper and intolerance for the unwanted attentions of women, nurses included.

Working with his appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Willis, Ackland learns his prognosis, but Willis is most concerned with Ackland's barely restrained aggression and frequent rages, which may be the result of traumatic brain injury, a serious concern. When Jennifer Morley, Charles's former fiancé, appears at the hospital, there is a violent confrontation, the injured soldier demanding she be kept away, Morley equally intent on reconnecting to her ex-fiancé. The conflict gives Dr. Willis a great deal of insight into his patient's mental condition, but the reader is equally unsettled by the sudden violence of a young man with such a heavy burden to bear from the Iraq War.

Meanwhile, as is the author's way of introducing relevant information into her thrillers, the local police are dealing with three recent attacks on single men, each bludgeoned to death in his home. Detective Superintendent Brian Jones believes the cases are linked, but so far the police have failed to establish exactly what those links are. By the time Lt. Ackland is released, living in a rented room while enduring useless surgeries, the locals are consumed with the details of these grotesque murders. Unaware of the events around him, Charles forgoes further surgeries to live with the consequences of his damaged face, beset by increasing migraines. One of these migraines brings him face to face with an intimidating female doctor, a weight-lifting, no-nonsense gal referred to as Jackson. Jackson steps in, medicates the troubled soldier and gives him a bed for the night.

After yet another attack, Ackland comes to the superintendent's notice, Jackson serving as a buffer between Charles and the authorities; but Ackland soon puts a stain on the relationship, spending nights in the streets with Chalky, an old reprobate and a teenaged runaway Jackson treats for diabetic complications. Ackland continues to confound the brusque doctor with his aberrant behavior. Despite Jackson's protection, Ackland is clearly a person of interest; but with her usual diabolic plotting, Walters throws in the twists and turns that define her mysteries. And in The Chameleon, Walters introduces a sympathetic protagonist, a potential Jekyll-Hyde figure, the past poisoning the future with unresolved issues, his disfigurement a companion for the rest of his life in a powerful portrait of the ravages of war. Luan Gaines/ 2008.