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|
 The
Straw Men by Michael
Marshall Smith
HarperCollins; (UK:
August 2002)
Review by John Berlyne
Hardcover - ISBN:
02256010
List Price:
£10.00
Purchase this book at:
Amazon
UK
I'm struggling in this review to avoid the old clichés
of "unputdownable" and "tour de force" because this
long awaited new novel from one of the UK's best exports is simply one
of the best things I've read in ages..
Michael Marshall Smith has amassed a fiercely loyal
readership over the last ten years with his impressive short story
output and award winning novels. His work has been optioned for
film, published in anthologies, collections and in impressive limited
volumes and has even been the subject of academic thesis. This is
a writer on a sharp upward trajectory and with The Straw Men he
looks set only to steepen the angle and quicken the pace of his success.
The opening of The Straw Men takes place in
a MacDonald's in Palmerston, a small backwoods town somewhere in
Pennsylvania. Folks are sat quietly munching on their sandwiches,
salesmen on their lunch breaks, tourists just passing through. This
scene of quiet if not hugely interesting tranquility is shattered by the
intrusion of two gunmen who enter the restaurant and begin firing
indiscriminately.
Ten years on and Ward Hopkins attends the funeral of his parents, both
killed in a car crash. The event naturally has him full of regret. He
should have visited more often, made an effort to be closer, returned
his mother's phone call last week. He did none of these things, and now
it's too late. He sits with his parent's lawyer and, still stunned by the
suddenness of it all, signs forms and attempts to take in these changes
to his circumstances. His life has turned on a sixpence, but exactly to
what extent, Ward has yet to discover.
In California, a teenage girl is abducted, the latest in a series of
such disappearances. Victims have been found dead; their hair hacked off
and returned to their parents as part of a grisly trophy gifted to them
by "The Upright Man". Only one cop, John Zandt, has come close
to finding this killer and he was punished royally, his own daughter
joining the ranks of the victims. Now Zandt, having left the force and
retreated into a world of grief is tracked down by a former colleague
and offered the chance, in an unofficial capacity, to rejoin the
investigation.
Ward, meanwhile, is discovering that everything he thought he knew about
his parents was lie. Indeed, the conspiracy he begins to uncover shows
that they weren't his parents at all, and their deaths were certainly no
accident. The Straw Men were involved, and Ward is about to find out how
powerful and dangerous they are.
It is rare that I read a story that really freaks me out, but The
Straw Men is so chilling and relentless that it may well keep you up
all night. This
is one of those books that you experience rather than read. The overall
tone revels in Smith's glorious cynicism, the breathless pace of the
plot being infused with the author's wry and dry wit. Smith has a talent
for articulating our most deep-seated fears and insecurities, not those
that come under the heading of Grand Themes but rather the little
things - our fear of the dark, our feelings that no matter how important
we think we may be, how big our egos, the truth is that we're powerless
small ants and that the boot of fate could come down on us at any time. Indeed
behind this novel lies a commentary on the nature of truth itself. Late
in the book, Zandt says, "Some people put too high a premium on
truth, Ward. Sometimes the truth isn't what you want to know. Sometimes
the truth is best left to itself." The Straw Men is a
warning to us all that ignorance is bliss.
The Straw Men will doubtless be optioned for film and if we don't
see it on our screens before too long, there is simply no justice in the
world! With this novel, Smith shows he is up there with Thomas Harris
and Stephen King.
Very highly recommended. |
