Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26419 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-07
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 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

The Guardian
"A new beginning for a major British writer, whose crime debut instantly moves him into the Thomas Harris division"

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

Customer Reviews

Great thriller
M.Marshall writes a great thriller in The Straw Men showing that not only is he a brilliant SF writer (under his M.Marshall Smith) but can also pen a mainstream detective, thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat. I don't want to give away the plot here but it deals with a clandestine bunch of men who believe in the superiority of the alpha-male type who stay at the top of the food chain/society by wanton acts of murder. Great stuff, read it!

Could be a disappointment for early fans
When I read this I was disappointed having loved the original wit and strangeness of Spares and One of us this book seemed to me to be just another horror/thriller. There are, I believe, others in the series but I lost interest after this one.
Read the other reviews if you are into this type of book then it is a well written piece of work. If you loved his earlier stuff and thought this would be more of the same then like me you may feel slightly let down.

Loved it
i personally loved this book. Not much of a reader but my friend gave me this and hey i loved it. Give it ago, trust me you won't regreat it