'The Chameleon’s Shadow' By Minette Walters
Published by Knopf. January 2008
ISBN: 978-0-307-26463-3
Minette Walters’ newest psychological suspense novel focuses on the effects of war, not on those who inhabit the country of warfare, but rather on those who fight the wars, and the horrendous injuries they sustain that affect every aspect of their lives, both physically and psychologically. The protagonist is British lieutenant Charles Acland, 26 years old, home from Iraq with devastating head injuries, including loss of sight in one eye and total disfigurement of that side of his face, tinnitus, and migraine headaches. Even worse are the resultant personality changes: suspicion of those around him almost to the point of paranoia; outbursts of uncontrolled anger [“red mist” is a recurring phrase]; distrust of nearly everyone, especially women; inability to tolerate being touched – whether all this is the result of post-traumatic guilt over the death of two of the men under him in the same attack or what is termed “the prolonged destruction of a personality,” or something else entirely, is unclear. The effects of traumatic brain injury and subsequent antisocial behavior are explored.
When several men in the London area are attacked and beaten to death over a period of several months, and it appears that it is the work of one man, Acland falls under suspicion. It is unclear to the police, and the reader, whether or not he is in fact the attacker. He unwillingly turns for aid to a woman whose lesbian partner runs a bar in which he has started a fight, a doctor called merely “Jackson.” A fascinating creation, she is variously described as being “the size of a whale” and “over six feet…this wide and looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger,” but she earns Acland’s grudging respect and becomes his savior, his psychiatrist [though that is not her area of medical specialization] and, ultimately, his friend.
The title derives from (1) Acland being described as, chameleon-like, projecting “different images of himself to different people,” and (2) the Jungian definition of a “shadow” as “the dark aspect of personality formed by those fears and unpleasant emotions which, being rejected by the self or persona of which an individual is conscious, exist in the personal unconscious.” The view is a disturbing one. I must admit that I couldn’t help but feel that the resolution was somehow less compelling than that which had preceded it. Nonetheless, Ms.
Walters has again written a gripping and suspenseful novel.
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Gloria Feit