Product Description

Michael Marshall's unique voice adds a chilling intensity to the serial-killer plot, combining dazzling narrative, a white-hot pace and a deeply disturbing backdrop of conspiracy. Sarah tries to struggle, but the man holds her. The scream never makes it out of her throat. 'Nobody watching,' the man says with hateful calm. 'I made it this way. I can walk where nobody sees.' The Straw Men. They kill people. Any people. And soon they'll get around to you. Sarah Becker is the fifth girl to be abducted by this maniac. Judging from the state of the bodies that have been found, her long hair will be hacked off and she will be tortured. She has about a week to live. Former LA homicide detective John Zandt has an inside track on the perpetrator -- his own daughter was one of his victims two years ago. But the key to Sarah's whereabouts lies with Ward Hopkins, a man with a past so secret not even he knows about it. His parents have just died in a car accident, but they leave Ward a very strange message that leads him to question everything he once believed to be true. As he begins to investigate his own past Ward finds himself drawn into the shadowy, sinister world of the Straw Men -- and into the desperate race to find Sarah, before her time runs out.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20954 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
With The Straw Men, Michael Marshall Smith moves impressively from being a promising author of surreal mid-list novels which draw equally on sf, fantasy and noir thriller into new and even darker territory.

Teenage Sarah is kidnapped in LA and subjected to the endless mad rants of the man who has nailed her under the floorboards, who is slowly starving her as he has others before. Burned-out cop Zandt, whose own daughter was taken and never seen again, is called back into the investigation by his FBI ex-mistress. Drunken, off-the-rails, ex-CIA Wade investigates the things which do not add up in the deaths of the parents he did not know as well as he thought he did. This is a book whose ambiguously heroic heroes share an almost comic ruthlessness with its villains and yet which never ceases to draw a clear line between the merely wrong and the profoundly wicked. Along the way, both the nature of the underlying conspiracy and the smart moves needed to track it down are created with remorseless ingenuity.

Marshall Smith has the skill to create motives and moves that are at once insane, plausible and contemporary. --Roz Kaveney

Review
'Just when you think there's nothing new under the sun in the world of the suspense novel, along comes one hell of a nasty spider call The Straw Men. It's brilliantly written and scary as hell. Be the first on your block to stay up all night with this one; it's a masterpiece, reminding us that even paranoids really do have enemies.' STEPHEN KING 'A staggering, suspenseful journey through the darkness of American crime ! succeeds in revitalising the serial killer novel with assured gusto! A new beginning for a major British writer, whose crime debut instantly moves him into the Thomas Harris division' Guardian 'Brilliantly plotted, stunningly written ! I read this in one go ! if this isn't a hit, I am a monkey's uncle. And I don't think I am'. Independent on Sunday 'Marshall's descriptions of people and places are memorable and evocative and he has produced and absorbing mystery with a chilling denouement' Sunday Telegraph 'The Straw Men is a genuinely original thriller that combines the imagination and darkness of his previous work with bolts of nerve-screaming tension ! Think "The X-files" meets "Hannibal".' Time Out 'The crucial thing about Michael Marshall Smith is that he is enormously readable! once you have started reading one of his books, you won't want to stop until you have finished it! He's in a class of his own! A master of ad absurdum gags [and] enough sensationally good throwaway wisecracks to fill a car park full of skips! He has the talent to become the inspiration to a generation of writers' THE INDEPENDENT 'Humour, a cracking pace and fluid prose! Sizzling! Michael Marshall Smith has a Crichton-like knack of attracting film studios' THE TIMES 'Outstanding, highly original! fiercely funny, and hugely entertaining' THE LITERARY REVIEW 'As always with the fiercely inventive Smith, the rug of reality is exhilaratingly pulled from under the reader's feet' NEW SCIENTIST 'No one writes better than Smith about love: how it's won, how it's lost. No one writes better about being wasted -- by drugs, by drink, by time. Nigh-on unique' i-D 'A storytelling skill that can only be described as pure genius' VENUE

The Independent, July 7, 2002
"Brilliantly plotted, stunningly written...If this isn't a hit, I'm a monkey's uncle."

Customer Reviews

A FineThriller - The Film Awaits!
This is the first Michael Marshall book I have read to date but I can safely say I will endeavour to read more. It is rare to find a book in this genre that is so well written. Keeping the reader gripped with a patchwork of perspectives; it displays the author's obvious intellect and has within it's pages passages that would not look out of place in texts that have theology or psychology as their main theme.
I would thoroughly recommend this book to any reader who enjoys a murder/mystery thriller though would say that it goes way beyond that.
Excellent Mr Marshall! - More books of this quality please.

Suspense - Psychological Thriller extraordinaire
Being a huge fan of MMS's previous works, I delved into my proof copy of Straw Men in earnest. While it bears no resemblance to his previous works in content, you can't miss his solitary unique polished finish. Apparently gearing for the Thomas Harris crowd (according to the jacket), he definitely delivers. Ward Hopkins, basic wanderer in life, discovers his youth was a sham upon his parents "death". He then spends his energies on trying to decipher a cryptic video, apparently left to him by his parents. Zandt, the darkly mysterious former homicide detective is perfectly characterised and believable. The locations are so brilliantly hewn, you feel like you're sitting at a McDonald's in Pennsylvania after a single paragraph. Great in-jokes for anyone on either side of the pond. I still feel Spares was his best achievement but this book was definitely a top-notch read.

Some of the best modern thriller fiction around
It is difficult to see how criticism can be levied at an author for diverting from his usual genre and writing style to attempt something different. It must have been clear to Marshall's many fans that when he wrote Straw Men it was not to be the fare he has previously penned. He even changed his writing name in doing so. I read Straw Men and thought it was a superbly engaging and thrilling piece of prose. It led me to read the other books he wrote which I absolutely loathed. Not my style, surrealism, but how could I criticise Marshall for that? Onto the Straw Men itself. The opening is as gripping, shocking and disturbing as any I have read recently and immediately sets the tone for a very dark, cynical and grimly observed narrative. It is reminiscent in this respect of James Ellroy and Elmore Leonard. Marshall does not quite reach that classic status and perhaps 5 stars ought to be reserved for that level of talent and insight, but when compared to the rest of the genre currently, Marshall is streets ahead of the rest of the cadre of 'serious thriller' writers (distinguishing the likes of Harlan Coben and Rpbert Crais whose styles are slightly more tongue-in-cheek given the demeanours of their narrators). His ability to keenly observe in a sardonic and bitter way puts him in the same league as Ian Rankin. Characterisation of Ward Hopkins, John Zandt and Nina Baynam is good, not perhaps as good as Rankin's Rebus, but the characters are in general very well rendered. Dialaogue is utterly believable, which in my book is as important as anything other single aspect of a work of fiction. Bad dialogue will never be compensated for by great description whereas the reverse is not necessarily true - poor descriptive narrative can sometimes be compensated for very well by excellent dialogue. The Straw Men is a very accomplished and adriot entry into the thriller genre and there is much to behoove it. You will not be disappointed nor will you be able to put it down...