The Straw Men is a gripping story that will keep on the edge from the very first page. You will be making guesses, trying to make out conclusions and even if you get some of it right that does not reduce the thrill any. It is quite hard to write this review without spoilers, but I will try. The story begins with a shoot out in a small town in Pennsylvania where two gunmen kill sixty-eight people without even blinking an eye. We are then taken a decade later where we meet Ward, an ex CIA agent, attending his parents funeral in Montana. After the funeral as he visits his parents' home he finds a note hidden there that simply says "We're not dead". Trying to find out the truth he sets in motion a series of events that lead him to a wild goose chase for the truth - truth about who his parents were and who he really is. At the same time in California a sixteen year old girl is abducted, which is linked to a notorious serial killer who was absent for two years. As the book proceeds we find out how these three events are interconnected and how a mysterious group that call themselves The Straw Men fit here. This was the first book I read by Michael Marshall and I know it will not be the last. I fell in love with his characters, all of them. An ex CIA agent trying to collect his life back after everything he ever believed in is shattered. A police officer in a quest for revenge when deep inside he is in war with himself. A FBI agent who remembers the height her career was once in and is struggling to pull it back there by trying to catch the most wanted killer. A CIA agent with a fierce sense of loyalty, and humor. And a killer who is advocating his cause and justifying the killing but is just trying to piece his sense of self together again. They were all beautiful. Even the side characters and their motives were beautifully expressed. Everybody had a place in this book and everybody had a role in the story, some we may realize later than sooner. The plot was slower than in most thrillers with more details about the mindset of the characters and what is driving them forward rather than the actual story but I didn't mind it. The story was pieced together beautifully and transitions between the situations and characters were smooth. I like books that tell the story from alternating point of views and all the characters held my attention, even Sarah with her incoherent rantings. Each character's essence was captured and it was easy to distinguish who was thinking the particular paragraph I was reading - which made me like the book even more. The last few chapters were so explicitly described it made me wince. It was even hard to even imagine the atrocities described and to write it down in such detail was so horibble and yet so wonderfully in sync with the book. There are a few plot-holes but since this is a series I guess my queries will be answered in the next books. But even as a stand-alone The Straw Men will put you on the edge and make you rethink about every crime, every massacre, every natural disaster and every plague that threatened human lives and wonder if there was not any inherent motive to all of it. A well deserved 5 stats!
Background/Synopsis:Michael Marshall writes horror under this name, but is also known for his science fiction, which he writes under Michael Marshall Smith. Perhaps he was inspired by Iain (M.) Banks, who likewise changes names depending on the genre.The Strawmen is a brutal, well-written horror story about a mysterious group of mass murderers called The Straw Men and a lone serial killer to may be tied to them, who calls himself the Upright Man. The Upright Man kidnaps a young, 16-year-old girl from a solidly middle-class family, Sarah Becker. John Zandt, a former policeman whose own daughter was taken by the Upright Man, is drawn reluctantly along back into the case with his former partner, Nina. Meanwhile, Ward Hopkins's parents die in a car crash but leave behind a message that he must investigate. Both Hopkins and Zandt end up working together to try and solve the mystery before Sarah Becker is murdered.Strengths:Michael Marshall is a clever writer. His prose is tight and he makes use of metaphoric language without going overboard. In just a few sentences, he can make the reader connect and understand a character, so that if that character dies later on, you mourn them.Weaknesses:Michael Marshall falls into the trap of usually writing the same protagonist, which is probably heavily influenced on himself. His protagonists are almost always drinkers, smokers, or drug users that have just kicked the habit and are trying to get their life back around. They have always recently undergone a terrible tragedy and if they had a relationship, it's fallen apart. The characters are witty and sardonic and have a way of getting themselves into trouble. He writes this character well, and in The Straw Men he does portray Nina and Sarah Becker quite well.Another weakness is that the book starts extremely strongly, but near the end it wanes a bit in my opinion. Things become a bit too large and link into a huge conspiracy. It was interesting, but it took away from the serial killer, and when he meets the other characters, he does not come across anywhere near as terrifying as he did in the opening scenes with Sarah Becker.Musings:A lot of serial killer novels are very serious and horrific all the way through. Occasional bits of humour (mostly dark humour, understandably) work very well in this novel. Also, characters at several points throughout the novel make fun of other horror novels like Thomas Harris, even though a blurb on the cover proclaims that Marshall is in the "Thomas Harris category."The format of the novel also worked well. Ward Hopkin's viewpoint is in first person, John Zandt's is as well if I remember correctly, which can be a bit confusing at times. Sarah Becker and Nina are in third person, as are the occasional viewpoints from the Upright Man's perspective. I really identified with Sarah Becker, as she reminded me quite a bit of myself and my friends at that age. It was terrifying, to think that so easily I could have had something so terrible happen to me, if my luck hadn't quite held out.Recommendation:I recommend the book to any lover of horror, and definitely not to anyone squeamish.
Do You like book The Straw Men (2002)?
Seriously!!? This book was terrible!!I was looking for a good, gripping and gritty book. Stephen King's glowing recommendation labeling it a 'masterpiece' and all the 5 star reviews on here made me think I was onto just the book and was excited to read it.It started out slightly interesting but I was taken aback straight away by the cliche characters and the cheesy dialogue. Really??? The washed out ex cop who is running from his demons... Dragged back on the case of a missing girl by the ex lov
—Andrew King
Well, I haven't done that for a while: picked up a book and devoured it with every spare waking moment over little more than two days. I have been pushing this book around for more than half a decade, and have nearly purged it from the collection more than once in that time, but it was very much worth the wait.A well-paced page turner, this, with really nothing in the way of extraneous moving parts. The best feature to my mind, aside from the rather compelling main plot points, was the lengthy musings that Marshall puts in the internal monologues of his various characters: long riffs on the nature of society that feel neither forced nor pretentious, which I take to be an achievement of some merit. Very dark, but excellently delivered, and I am eagerly looking forward to ripping through The Upright Man at the same breathless pace.
—Aldean
I read a lot, a lot of drivel mostly. Not deliberately you understand, you pick up a book and look at it's cover, read the blurb on the back, maybe read a few reviews on a website such as Goodreads and often find encouragement & idiocy in equal measure. Just occasionally, maybe 1 in 100, a book will change your outlook somehow for good or bad, this book is such a one for me.Don't get me wrong, there are issues with it, it is not the perfect novel, hence 4 stars and not 5, but it is well crafted, sometimes disconcerting and disturbing. The writing is good and the author knows it, at times I feel he is too much in thrall of his power over language, some of the dialogue is too clever and not feasable in a spontaneous conversation. But for all that, his phrase and word play is satisfying.I can't say that the alternative ideas in this book are the dawning of some kind of truth, that would be utterly ridiculous, but they did make me step back and think, I can't ask an author for anything more.My dillema is whether I should pick up the follow up book, I'm afeared that it will diminish what I've just read.
—Chas
