Do You like book The Intruders (2007)?
I liked the premise, that the people close to you are not quite who you think they are. The book was recently made into a TV series starring John Simm and Mira Sorvino, quality actors who are unlikely to work on a project with shoddy source material. So I dived into this novel with enthusiasm. It started well, introducing us to the characters and creating an air of creeping mystery, like any good thriller should. Unfortunately, by about half-way, it began to drag as the story lost momentum and I lost empathy for the whiny protagonist. Using both first- and third-person narration didn't help, as jumping between these two perspectives was not only jarring, but it destroyed much of the suspense. Finally, the ending was a confusing mess as too many characters ran amok and the resolution of the story was only half-explained. The book was additionally spoiled by a continuous stream of bad grammar, paragraphs full of half-written sentences, dependent clauses that suddenly ended without any support, and full stops where commas should have been. When you read a good book, the grammar should be invisible: your mind focuses on the story. Sloppy editing wrecks the story by distracting you. A professional writer should know better, but this kind of lazy writing has become all too common today, released on the market by publishers who are just as slovenly as their authors. Surely a publishing house with the reputation of HarperCollins would have the resources to hire an editor who can fix it? If this is the standard for Marshall's books, I won't be reading another one.
—James Perkins
Compared by critics to Stephen King and Philip K. Dick, British novelist Michael Marshall crosses genre barriers, from crime to horror to science fiction, in the fast-paced, action-packed Intruders. As the story takes one creepy, bizarre turn after another, Marshall's convincing characters act consistently and believably in a progressively implausible situation. A few complaints included the intricate plotting and the book's length, but most of the critics' objections resulted from the novel's abrupt transformation from a run-of-the-mill murder mystery into a supernatural thriller. While The Intruders may appeal most to fans of The X-Files, readers who can suspend their disbelief will be rewarded by the originality, suspense and "unwavering storytelling" (South Florida Sun-Sentinel) of this genre-defying novel.This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
—Bookmarks Magazine
Loved it! I struggled to write this review. Not because I could not find something nice to say but because I had nothing bad to say. My usual modus operandi is to focus on things that I didn't like, things that sounded unrealistic or were disruptive to the overall immersion into the book, “the intruders” simply lacked all of those bad qualities that I could complain about. Be it the narrative or the plot, or even the ending, while unexpected, did not leave room for me to say things should have turned out somehow differently. So with nothing bad to say, I will say only one thing. Pick it up, read it, I do not think you will regret it. I am not a big fan of the horror genre. Although I should not say that, I am a fan of the kind of horror that is realistic. The kind that you know could be happening right next door without you knowing anything about it. This is the kind of horror – thriller “the intruders” is. It is not that Shepperd is going around killing people, it is that the people that are the closest to you could be taken over internally by intruders. Within days those closest to you can become someone else, and in a way it is worse than having those people die. When a person dies, in a way it is a period at the end of their story, you can close the book and start moving on. When a person is slowly morphing into someone you do not recognize you are constantly reminded of the person you have lost and the person you will never again find and it makes it almost impossible to move on and find closure. To add onto the possibility of the book being true is the short but important discussion of mental illness and substance abuse. It is, entirely possible that people around us are fighting intruders in the minds right as we speak. Plot: 5Writing: 5 (I think I have come to the conclusion that I like British writers more than American writers.)Characters: 5
—Dea