Contemporary Authors

1. The anomaly https://lccn.loc.gov/2017053130 Rutger, Michael, author. The anomaly / Michael Rutger. First edition. New York : Grand Central Publishing, June 2018. pages cm PR6069.M5225 A55 2018 ISBN: 9781538761854 (hardback) 1. Bad things https://lccn.loc.gov/2009013163 Marshall, Michael, 1965 May 3- Bad things / Michael Marshall. 1st ed. [New York] : William Morrow, c2009. 371 p. ; 24 cm. PR6069.M5225 B33 2009 ISBN: 9780061434402006143440X9780061434419 (pbk.)0061434418 (pbk.) 2. Blood of angels https://lccn.loc.gov/2005578107 Marshall, Michael, 1965 May 3- Blood of angels / Michael Marshall. Jove mass-market ed. New York : Jove Books, 2005. 401 p. ; 18 cm. CPB Box no. 2400 vol. 14 ISBN: 0515140082 3. The intruders https://lccn.loc.gov/2006047087 Marshall, Michael, 1965 May 3- The intruders / Michael Marshall. 1st ed. New York : William Morrow, c2007. 392 p. ; 24 cm. PR6069.M5225 I58 2007 ISBN: 97800612350230061235024 4. Killer move https://lccn.loc.gov/2011029920 Marshall, Michael, 1965 May 3- Killer move / Michael Marshall. 1st ed. New York : William Morrow, c2011. 351 p. ; 24 cm. PR6069.M5225 K55 2011 ISBN: 9780061434426 5. The straw men https://lccn.loc.gov/2002437754 Marshall, Michael, 1965 May 3- The straw men / Michael Marshall. London : HarperCollins, 2002. 373 p. ; 25 cm. PR6069.M5225 S77 2002 ISBN: 00022560100007151861 (trade pbk.) 6. The straw men https://lccn.loc.gov/2004563631 Marshall, Michael, 1965 May 3- The straw men / Michael Marshall. Jove ed. New York : Jove, c2002. 389 p. ; 18 cm. CPB Box no. 2103 vol. 12 ISBN: 0515134279 (pbk.) : 7. The upright man https://lccn.loc.gov/2004574997 Marshall, Michael, 1965 May 3- The upright man / Michael Marshall. Jove ed. New York : Jove Books, 2004. 360 p. ; 18 cm. CPB Box no. 2198 vol. 17 ISBN: 0515136387 (pbk.) 8. We are here https://lccn.loc.gov/2013038912 Marshall, Michael, 1965 May 3- We are here / Michael Marshall. First North American edition New York : Mulholland Books / Little, Brown and Company, 2014. 439 pages ; 21 cm PR6069.M5225 W4 2014 ISBN: 9780316252577 (pbk.) 1. One of us https://lccn.loc.gov/98010580 Smith, Michael Marshall. One of us / Michael Marshall Smith. New York : Bantam Books, c1998. 302 p. ; 24 cm. PR6069.M5225 O54 1998 ISBN: 0553106058 2. Only forward https://lccn.loc.gov/2002568949 Smith, Michael Marshall. Only forward / Michael Marshall Smith. New York : Bantam Books, 2000. 341 p. ; 18 cm. CPB Box no. 1927 vol. 9 ISBN: 0553579703 (pbk.) : 3. The servants https://lccn.loc.gov/2008000456 Smith, Michael Marshall. The servants / Michael Marshall Smith. 1st EOS ed. New York, NY : Eos, 2008. 213 p. ; 21 cm. PR6069.M5225 S47 2008 ISBN: 9780061494161 (acid-free paper)006149416X (acid-free paper) 4. Spares https://lccn.loc.gov/96024309 Smith, Michael Marshall. Spares / Michael Marshall Smith. New York : Bantam Books, 1997. 322 p. ; 24 cm. PR6069.M5225 S63 1997 ISBN: 055310604X 5. The vaccinator https://lccn.loc.gov/2002483361 Smith, Michael Marshall. The vaccinator / Michael Marshall Smith. Andy Warhol's Dracula / Kim Newman. London : Millennium, 2000. 72, 91 p. ; 18 cm. PR6069.M5225 V33 2000 ISBN: 1857987608

• Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence - 2017 HARPER COLLINS, https://smile.amazon.com/Hannah-Green-Unfeasibly-Mundane-Existence/dp/0008237913/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1534102049&sr=8-2
• The Lonely Dead by Michael Marshall - 2004 HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, https://smile.amazon.com/Lonely-Dead-Michael-Marshall-2004-08-14/dp/B01K3JMBNQ/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1534102049&sr=8-4
• The Gist - 2013 Subterranean, https://smile.amazon.com/Gist-Michael-Marshall-Smith/dp/1596065613/ref=sr_1_5_twi_har_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1534102049&sr=8-5&keywords=Michael+Marshall
• Everything You Need - Earthling Publications 2013, https://smile.amazon.com/Everything-Need-Michael-Marshall-Smith/dp/0983807140/ref=sr_1_13_twi_har_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1534102049&sr=8-13&keywords=Michael+Marshall
• More Tomorrow & Other Stories - 2003 Earthling Publications, https://smile.amazon.com/Tomorrow-Other-Stories-Michael-Marshall/dp/0974420301/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1534102049&sr=8-17&dpID=51cSuuaC8HL&preST=_SY344_BO1,204,203,200_QL70_&dpSrc=detail
• Cat Stories - 2001 Earthling Publications, https://smile.amazon.com/Cat-Stories-Michael-Marshall-Smith/dp/B001EF1UYA/ref=sr_1_cc_2?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1534102316&sr=1-2-catcorr&keywords=Michael+Marshall+Smith++cat+stories

• Book Slut - http://www.bookslut.com/fear_factor/2004_07_002796.php

  Michael Marshall Smith
  First, before I get to this month's column, a quick piece of sad news: Hugh B. Cave, one of true masters in the field, passed away in June. He wrote for the pulps during their heyday in the first half of the 20th Century, and found even more success late in life as a horror novelist. He was 94 when he passed, but I don't doubt that he still had great tales to tell (Cemetery Dance Press published a new novel of his as recently as two months ago).

  I've dropped the name Michael Marshall Smith a few times since I've been writing for Bookslut. Given two recent publications, it's time to finally devote an entire column to him. Smith, a British author with an amazing talent for capturing American voices, is best known as a science fiction writer, but all of his books (regardless of genre) have a edge to them that few books, even ones much more firmly planted in "traditional" horror, manage.

  Smith's debut, Only Forward, is stealthy. At first, it seems like Sci-Fi Lite, as a hard-boiled detective narrator named Stark deals with wacky talking appliances and a futuristic city in which individual blocks have distinct themes. After he tracks down a missing scientist (and thus solves what appears to be the primary mystery) about halfway through the novel, the book takes a sharp right turn into New Wave territory, plunging Stark into a situation in which he's forced to examine and confront his own dreams and history. Ten years after its publication, Only Forward remains the closest anyone has gotten to the feel of Zelazny and Dick. Smith breaks plenty of the established "rules" of writing, shifting from the zany and hardboiled setting to the surreal but much more serious one. The novel is so perfectly constructed that it's hard, even on re-reading, to find any fault with either half of the book.

  Smith's next two novels, Spares and One of Us, are equally mind-bending. Spares tells the story of a future in which humans are grown for parts (not a totally unusual concept). Jack, the security guard who eventually decides to free them, is a Hammett-inspired cynical ex-soldier. Instead of taking the standard path examining the nature of humanity, Smith uses the initial plot to launch an exploration of a world gone more than slightly mad, as the ravages of a war come back to haunt Jack. One of Us, perhaps his most straightforward early novel, pulls its concept straight from Dick and Gibson: now that the police can pull memories from people's minds, criminals pay RemTemps to put their guilty memories in someone else's mind for a few hours while they get interrogated. But the lead character ends up with a murder in his head that he can't get the owner to take back, and he's now being hunted as if he's the murderer himself. Both are damned fine psychological novels hidden behind SF packaging.

  Smith has released two connected horror novels over the last two years, The Straw Men and The Upright Man (note for American readers: For some odd reason, his publishers felt like repackaging these books under the pseudonymous "Michael Marshall"). These books start in Thomas Harris territory, examining a brutally effective serial killer and those left in his wake. They start as standard thriller/horror fare, but slowly mix in a conspiracy that extends back to the founding of America. He then adds a very nice but subtle element of the supernatural. The books effectively take the thriller genre that folks like Deaver and James Patterson have developed to their horrific conclusion.

  Great as Smith is as a novelist, he is possibly the best contemporary writer of terrifying short stories. "More Tomorrow" (also the title of his second collection) is the first story I ever read that effectively used the Internet to enhance fear. It's a brutal tale of a man who discovers something horrible posted anonymously on Usenet, and has, to this day, the most chilling final sentence I've read in a story. His tales run the gamut from stories of atrocious acts committed by seemingly normal people ("A Convenient Arrangement," a short-short that appeared in Cemetery Dance but has not, to my knowledge, been collected, is the wittiest of these), to unique supernatural horror. The latter include unique takes on traditional monsters, like the updated Lovecraftian "To See the Sea" and "Dear Allison," a superb vampire story. It also includes genuinely original horror. "The Man Who Drew Cats," about an artist with a unique gift, is the sort of revenge story that makes you remember how good Stephen King used to be. "When God Lived in Kentish Town" is one of those tales that just defies classification. And "The Dark Land" is possibly the best and scariest dreamworld tale I've ever encountered, perfectly capturing the surreal and horrific nature of dream gone mad.

  All of Smith's novels are in print. He's had two short story collections released. His first, What You Make It, was only released in the UK, but is still in print and easy to order online. The second, More Tomorrow and Other Stories, was released as a limited edition by Earthling Publications. It's pricey, but worth every cent. PS Publications, a British Small Press, has just released Michael Marshall Smith: The Annotated Bibliography, which combines complete bibliographic data with notes from Smith himself about the stories and his creative process. I've yet to see the bibliography (which, I'm told, makes a great gift for Bookslut columnists), but I own everything else Smith has published, and if I had my way, his books would be on every shelf in America.

• Shots Crime and Thriller eZine - http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/interview_view.aspx?interview_id=75

  The Return of MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH

  Written by Ali Karim

  Some of you know that I have avidly followed the work of Michael Marshall Smith since he launched his debut Only Forward in 1994. He successfully published many sf/noir novels and short stories but really hit the UK book charts hard with his mind-bending The Straw Men in 2002. It did extremely well, and I absolutely loved its weaving of the crime genre into a dark conspiracy thriller.

  Then came two sequels [of sorts] – The Lonely Dead [aka The Upright Man in the US], and Blood of Angels. So we had a Straw Men trilogy and Michael shared with Shots eZine why his ground-breaking conspiracy thriller became the start of a series. The article is archive here

  If you’ve not read Michael Marshall [Smith] – then I would refer you to a lengthy article and interview I recorded with him five years ago for January magazine and is archived here [http://www.januarymagazine.com/profiles/mmarshall.html]

  That was the history lesson.

  Now back to 2007, because you have a dark delight ahead of you in April: Michael Marshall returns with an exceptional thriller entitled The Intruders, from HarperCollins UK, which blew my mind.

  I just love conspiracy thrillers and The Intruders is just that but more. It mixes Michael’s parallaxed view of life, mingling the noir with a sense of menace that grabs you, filling your mind with dread. There is an element of horror and the pay-off makes you question what you consider the relationship between life and death may actually mean. I really cannot say any more lest I spoil the big surprise that sits at the end of this novel, like a demon clutching a handgun pointing directly into your face.

  My review is here: http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/reviews2007/reviews0207/the_intruders.html

  So I called Michael up, and decided to find out what’s new in his world, and also to try and understand more about The Intruders. Don’t just lock the doors when you crack the spine of this book, ensure you call the services of a security company, and buy a gun - because you will be scared, make no mistake – Because they’re all ready inside and perhaps resistance is futile…

  Ali : Michael – Welcome back to Shots Ezine!

  Michael : A pleasure to be back!

  Ali : I’ve seen from www.michaelmarshallsmith.com that you’ve been rather busy; what have been the highlights and lowlights over the last year?

  Michael : It’s been busy, that’s for sure. The background throughout has been the writing of my new novel, The Intruders. It took up a lot of foreground, too. At the beginning of 2006 I also co-wrote (with Stephen Jones) an animated horror movie for kids, called Monstermania, which is currently at the pre-pre-pre-production/development/whatever stage. I’ve managed to get a few Michael Marshall Smith short stories written, for once, and from August onwards have also been involved in writing a feature adaptation of one of an earlier story, Hell Hath Enlarged Herself. Just before Christmas I got a 50,000 word novella done too - so work-wise 2006 was generally a year of getting stuff done ... and getting stuff done is always good.

  Ali : After Blood Of Angels, I thought you were leaving crime-fiction for a while, and I was most surprised to hear about you penning The Intruders –

  what made you change your mind?

  Michael : I never intended to leave crime fiction, in the same way I never really intended to join it. I’ve always thought of what I do more as ‘noir’ than crime, and essentially the core perspective has been the same right from the earliest novels. Those happened to be set in the future, and so got labelled ‘sf’ (and died in the crime market); the last three novels were set in the present day, so they’ve been seen as ‘crime’ (thus perplexing sf readers). To me it’s all been the same, just with changes in emphasis.

  Ali : So tell us what we are likely to expect?

  Michael : My dream is to find a way of bringing all the kinds of material I like –

  crime, noir, horror, the weird and unusual and dark – into one novel, in a way that doesn’t put off any of the fans of those sub-genres. The Intruders, though very largely a crime or thriller novel, is a first step in that direction...

  Ali : I see The Intruders is out in the UK in April, are there plans for US release?

  Michael : Yes — The Intruders will be coming out in hardcover from William Morrow in August. Morrow is a new publisher for me and I’ve been delighted with the response to the book there.

  Ali : Like The Straw Men trilogy, there is a central conspiracy going on in The Intruders, and a big one to boot, so where did the seeds come from for the central idea [without giving away the ending]?

  Michael : In just about everything I’ve done at book length, I’ve been trying to think about aspects of human nature, the type of cultures and society we live in. What drives us, what shapes our world - and how so much of our behaviour now has its roots long, long ago. We forget we’re an animal, in both negative and positive ways. The idea at the centre of The Intruders has to do with seeking to explain certain fundamental aspects of the way we are, our inherent dualism, and the unknowability of other people. Like most of these things I’ve done, the central idea started out as a conceit, but now I kind of believe it to be true...

  Ali : Conspiracy theories appear to interest you, as you reference them in The Intruders - so what can you tell us are your top three conspiracy theories and why they interest you?

  Michael : There’s only one conspiracy theory: Something is Going On That I Don’t Know About. And the natural human response to this is to develop a more specific theory which says: Something is Going On That Most People Don’t Know About, But I Do, And It Explains Everything, So There. Virtually all humankind’s conceptual thought boils down to something like this - Gnosticism, UFOs, 9/11, life after death, JFK, witches, religion, myth and legend in general - and is most simply enshrined in the notion that God moves in mysterious ways. ‘Conspiracy’ is an attempt to inductively solve life’s oddities and mysteries, to put the theorist in a position of power through allowing him or her to peek behind the veils, and thus to resolve the anxiety of feeling ignorant or confused. So I don’t really have any favourite three - my enjoyment instead comes in seeing how they work together, representing different facets of the same crystal, especially if they give some fresh (albeit usually plain wrong) way of understanding the world.

  I’ll tell you my least favourite, which is the Death of Diana. There was no conspiracy there - her driver was simply going too fast, and the British public was dying to wallow in mawkish tabloid grief for a while - and frankly, I don’t care anyway. Her death is of real import to her family and friends only, and that’s the way it should be. Any other interest is intrusive. Plus, to be honest, I found her really annoying.

  Ali : Have you seen In Plane Site and Loose Change 2 – which purport to consider the events of 911 to be part of a wider conspiracy?

  Michael : I haven’t seen either of those. 9/11 isn’t high up my list of favourites either, simply because the idea that people might have known about the attack ahead of time - as the president is alleged by some to have known about Pearl Harbor, and let it go ahead in order to bring the US into the war - doesn’t change anything about my understanding of the world. So our political leaders work in ways which are intended to be mysterious and clever, but are actually cack-handed and short-sighted and dangerous? Well, duh.

  Ali : Reading The Intruders late into the night did give me chills, especially the sense of menace you build up, but how difficult was it not to let the cat out of the bag too early on?

  Michael : It’s always one of the key tasks in a crime or thriller novel, especially when there’s – hopefully – suspense working on both plot and thematic levels: the unwinding of a story, and of an idea. It’s particularly acute when you’re working from a multi-perspective viewpoint, because it’s easier to pull the wool over the reader’s eyes when they’re only learning things through the life of someone who doesn’t know what’s going on. But bad guys don’t spend their entire lives rehearsing their plots and secrets in their heads - so you just have to spend time with them when they’re doing stuff which is informed by the greater story, rather than giving it all away...

  Ali : Apart from a sense of foreboding that ripples through the narrative of The Intruders, there are huge elements of tragedy such as the murders of innocent people that come into contact with ex-LAPD cop Jack Whalen and Gary Fisher, right up to Whalen’s marriage problem, the missing ten-year-old girl Madison and her relationship with the mysterious Mr Shepard. How difficult is it to write such heart-wrenching stuff, without getting too deep into pathos?

  Michael : I actually don’t see this stuff as heart-wrenching. People die, relationships dissolve. But people are also born, and new relationships start. It’s all part of a continuing cycle of human life. There are no truly unhappy endings, because you never know what’s around the corner: people get over things, they move on, they adapt and they cope, and that’s a very positive thing about us. And by the same token, there are no truly happy endings, either.

  Ali : Interesting that much of the action is based in and around Seattle. Does Seattle have any resonance with you and have you spent much time in that city?

  Michael : I love Seattle. I’ve only spent a few weeks there all told, but the first time I visited I immediately thought “I like this place a lot”. It’s partly to do with the city itself, its neighbourhoods and history and the market and bay (plus great seafood and bookstores), partly its location — in sight of both sea and high ground, with the Cascade Mountains (which featured in The Lonely Dead) only a couple of hours inland, and the extraordinary Olympic Forest about the same distance around the bay. Seattle has just about everything a city needs, while remaining of walkable size. That whole area of the US - the Pacific Northwest - is one of my favourite places in the world. There’s something about Washington and Oregon that harks back to an earlier era, both of the settlement of America and the times before our species was little more than a blip on the map. It feels old, and mysterious, and a lot of it’s pretty deserted, too. It’s also one of the few places in the US where a gentleman can still smoke in a bar, should he wish to.

  In preparation for writing The Intruders I shipped myself off to Seattle for a week by myself. I stayed in a hotel downtown, which I left at 8:30 each morning and hiked the streets pretty much non-stop until 5:00, pausing only for lunch, bookstores and Starbucks. By the end I liked the city even more (and was being greeted by local tramps each morning) and the story I had in mind had become firmly shaped by the environment and its history.

  Ali : I know you and your wife recently had an addition to the family – and I got the feeling that worked itself into the narrative – am I right?

  Michael : Yes, I think it did. It certainly got me thinking about childhood, and early childhood especially, in a way I never had before. Particularly during those long watches when I was downstairs with a baby before 5:00 am, waiting for children’s TV to start - meanwhile cursing myself for not being tougher about television, like I thought I would be, and feeling I should be teaching the little critter Japanese or yoga instead - and waiting blearily for the sun to appear... There were times when I thought the book would never get written, to be honest, but I suspect it’s better for the experience.

  Ali : What are the practical realities having a baby around the house for you and your work?

  Michael : Put it this way - in an ideal world, I would have handed in the book eight to ten months before I did... Things have levelled out now, but the first year and a half of sleep deprivation was pretty brutal. My wife and I were talking the other day and we realised neither of us can actually remember Christmas 2005. We know it happened, but we can’t recall a single thing about it. This could have something to do with the fact our baby elected to wake at 4:30 every day for a month either side of the festive season. That, plus the change in the house from being a sepulchrally quiet work environment to noisy zoo (my son has a better social life than I do, and there’s generally another baby or two kicking around the place) certainly took some getting used to. But now it means that a couple of times a day I have a very cute toddler hectically barrelling into the study demanding to be allowed to play on my computer for a while - and it all seems as worthwhile as I knew it would.

  Ali : The Intruders does have a little genre cross-over like The Straw Men; how supportive were your publishers in a world dominated by genre classifications?

  Michael : There were some teething troubles, that’s for sure - and in the end I wound up making a few adjustments to bring the book within their comfort zone. I’m happy with the result, and the editing process certainly helped refine some elements of the story. The book industry is very structured by rigid genre definitions at the moment, and you attempt to blur them at your peril. But now we have a book that Harper is supportive of and my new US publishers appear to be backing to the hilt, so that’s great. I’m never going to sit very comfortably within one genre or another, and will take large sales hits as a result. I can live with that.

  Ali : Talking of genres I see that you are Guest of Honour at Fantasycon 2007 in England as well as Guest of Honour at the World Horror Convention in Canada. Do your Michael Marshall Smith horror/sf readers read your Michael Marshall crime fiction, and what do they make of it?

  Michael : There’s some cross-over, but predictably it’s nowhere near 100 per cent. There are some sf readers who simply won’t read anything that’s not set in the future, and the Michael Marshall books aren’t, so that’s that. But there were many readers of the kind-horror Michael Marshall Smith short stories who wouldn’t read the sf novels either, so it goes both ways. I’m sure the bulk of the Michael Marshall readers don’t even realise these two other strands exist - which is why I say that at some point I’d like to find some kind of synthesis of all these things. The only question is whether it would sell more than about four copies ... but you know, sales aren’t everything. Writing’s a way of life. I’m more concerned with fighting the age-old battle to not be too crap, than I am with what bookshelf I wind up on.

  Ali : I keep hearing rumours that the horror genre is coming out of the shadows. As someone familiar with that genre, do you feel horror is coming back as it did in the late 1970’s?

  Michael : I keep hearing these rumours too, but I’m not sure what they’re based on – other than the fact, perhaps, that a few ‘literary’ writers have dipped their toes into horror-like territory in the last couple of years, with some success. I think it’s got a way to go. The genre’s struggling against publisher prejudice and reader wariness - an awful lot of dreadful rubbish got published toward the end of the boom in the 1980s, and horror writers are still paying the price. They’re quietly making things worse, too, often, by pandering to the lowest common denominator in the horror readership, as core readers are not always the most discerning. What the genre needs is what it’s had several times before: someone like Clive Barker or Stephen King or Robert Bloch to come out punching, presenting a vibrant new take on the field - who can cross over to a mainstream audience without compromising the integrity of the horror.

  Ali : Talking of things horrific, the violence in The Intruders is full-on right from the opening, and very shocking throughout the work, with some of the character[s] being plain evil. What’s your take on the role of viscera in crime fiction?

  Michael : It’s funny - you say that, but there’s actually very, very little open violence in the book. I don’t like the visceral approach in crime, and didn’t like it in horror either. You don’t need to see guts, just as – most of the time – you don’t need to show what goes on behind the bedroom door. If you understand why someone’s raising a gun or knife or hand, and what the cost of it’s going to be to the victim (or why those two people are walking hand in hand up to the boudoir) then why waste time dealing out a blow-by-blow? It panders to low instincts, gets in the way of lean story and character exposition, and makes the genre/s look bad to outsiders. It also insults the intelligence of the reader: you can afford to cut the scene five seconds earlier - they know what’s going to happen, and it will be worse in their minds than anything you can sit and type out. There’s a certain thrill from being confronted with extremes, but it’s a cheap one, and fades pretty fast.

  Ali : I felt also that in The Intruders you really got into characterisation in a big way, which many ‘high-concept’ tales lack. Can you tell us how you weave believable characters out of the ether?

  Michael : I’m glad you felt that, but if it’s true then I have no idea how it happens. The characters of a novel are usually amongst the first things to come into my head, as if arriving there after separate plane or road journeys, a little weary and out of sorts, an interlinking story already beginning to coalesce between them. During the period of writing the novel they’re at least as real to me as my family and friends are. As the media of virtual communication become more and more prevalent, face-time is going to be used less and less as a marker of friendship or ‘knowing’ someone. I have a great friend who lives and works in LA, for example, and I haven’t seen him properly - bar a quick drink in a Santa Monica bar eighteen months ago - in nearly five years. He’s still very real to me. The fact I’ve never stood in the same physical space as Jack Whalen or Ward Hopkins, or all the people who weave through their lives, doesn’t make them any less ‘real’. Though I’m a little glad they don’t actually live in my street.

  Ali : Technology plays a big role in The Intruders from Blackberrys, mobile phones, SMS, internet, GPS, digital imagery, digital music, etc., so are you a techno-man in real life?

  Michael : Tragically so. If there was anything I could do to get an iPhone into my life right now, I’d probably do it - even though I know full well (after many, many years of being an early-adopter of Apple kit) that it probably won’t work quite as I hope. But we’re all getting that way. When I’m away from home I communicate primarily by SMS, especially with my dad, who’s in his seventies. My aunt (who’s a similar age) is a whiz at putting together stuff on her Mac, and spends half her evenings on the internet. Everyone’s got a digital camera and an MP3 player. This stuff is now nearly as transparent a part of our lives as telephones and television were when we were growing up. Any fiction which doesn’t take account of this is simply not reflecting the real world. The way we interact and live is changing: our ability to become informed of the actions and moods of distant others (through the cell phone and email) is so important and new as to be almost equivalent to the gaining of an additional sense. With this - given our fractured human nature - also comes anxiety (what happens if I can’t get hold of her! How come he’s not responding to his email right away!), and potential darkness of a hundred different kinds. Any genre fiction should be reflecting our species’ state of play, as it stands, right now. That means getting a handle on this stuff, and bedding it into our fiction as it is in the real world.

  Ali : Your thoughts on the internet in The Intruders were interesting, in so far as it is now becoming a ‘tool’ [for lack of a better word] for the powers that be to keep tabs on humanity?

  Michael : The internet’s a strange place. A lot of the features that people go on about - MySpace and YouTube, for example - don’t seem too interesting to me. It’s the same old same old (cliques, friend lists, showing off) merely done in a different medium. But the ways in which it’s changing our interactions – and our perceptions of distant others – are fascinating. And because it largely removes the constraint of peer review – and indeed any kind of arbiter of sense or truth –

  it’s becoming a repository for some very odd ideas: which co-exist on a flat plain with everything else, just as everything in a digital photograph seems to exist in the same depth of field. In Baudrillard’s terms, it’s a growing simulation of thought – another step in the death of reality.

  Ali : What electronic gadgets can you no longer live without?

  Michael : Computers, obviously - I live my whole life on them. I’d hate to be without my Treo phone, too (at least until I can get my hands on an iPhone) - as finally I’ve got a device that I can call, text and email from, which also syncs my addresses, calendar and notes with my Mac. I’ve got a great Canon digital SLR that I love using - it evidently has some chip in it that makes even clinically average photographers look as though they know what they’re doing (some of the time). But even more than gadgets, my life is run around software. I spend more time with Word than I do my wife and child put together, and there’s a great new piece of Mac note-making software just out, called Scrivener, that I’ve been involved in beta-testing – and which has genuinely changed the way I work. And I love having a .mac account, so my key files are automatically backed up to a server in California every night. And ... the list goes on and on. If someone ever turns the power grid off, I’m in deep shit.

  Ali : I felt that the ending of The Intruders leaves an opening for a follow-up. And could you see a collision between the [surviving] characters that populate The Straw Men trilogy and The Intruders perhaps?

  Michael : You’re an astute man. Some sort of cross-fertilisation had occurred to me as a possibility, and the eagle-eyed reader may spot a foreshadowing of that already in this novel. But at the moment I’m not completely sure what I’m going to write next ...

  Ali : What about your film work? I heard that your story Hell Hath Enlarged Herself has you in the producer’s chair as well as helping in the screenwriting?

  Michael : That’s right. I’m one of the producers in a co-production of this story, which has development funded by the UK Film Council. We’re currently at the early script stage, and the first draft is being read by financiers right now. I’m co-writing the script with another two guys, who work as a team, but I also get to the do the producer thing every now and then too - i.e. listing a bunch of things I think are wrong with the script and then asking someone else to sort it out. After years of being the guy who always got told to sort things out, I’m liking this new arrangement very much indeed.

  Ali : I know you are published by big publishing houses like HarperCollins, but you also appear in the smaller independent press such as PS Publishing and Earthling [to name just two] – can you tell me the differences working for the big and the small publishers?

  Michael : Three differences, I guess - money, pressure and freedom. With the big publishers you get the first two; with the smaller presses, you don’t - but you get the last one. I have a great relationship with Harper and have been with them for seven novels, and over a decade. The relative sales of the past three novels, however, mean they’re justifiably keen that I produce books that are consistent with what’s gone before - so they don’t scare the horses (or pre-established readership). They also want them on time, weirdly, and get awfully pushy when you suggest that the year after next might be a good time to see the next one, or just ‘at some point in the future’.

  Working with smaller presses tends to mean you’re under less pressure, and may also confer the freedom to go a lot further out into left field. I’ve just written a long novella for Earthling (Paul Miller is an utter delight to work with, and one of the most professional human beings I’ve ever encountered) and I’m very pleased with the result.

  Ali : And what’s this about your piece in ‘How to Write a Blockbuster’ and how did this come out?

  Michael : Ha, yes. We’ll, it’s not a ‘piece’, as such - more a few nuggets of so-called wisdom. Mine mainly involve cats, and I’m not sure how helpful they’ll be... I have no idea how you deliberately set about writing anything, never mind a ‘blockbuster’. But the book as a whole looks pretty good.

  Ali : What’s on your reading table currently? And what books have you enjoyed recently?

  Michael : I’m finally getting back into some fiction, after a long time off. I’ve found myself going back to what I think of as ‘early late period’ Stephen King – books like Bag Of Bones and Hearts In Atlantis – and realising they were even better than I thought the first time. Aside from that I’m taking a slow and pleasurable trawl through Calvin Trillin’s food writing ... and dipping in and out of Jean Baudrillard as I see fit. I love his stuff.

  Ali : Finally what’s on the horizon for Michael Marshall, as well as Michael Marshall Smith?

  Michael : Well, the Michael Marshall story for 2007 is The Intruders, together with starting a new novel at some point. Michael Marshall Smith will have quite a few short stories published, including a three-story collection exclusive to the World Horror Convention, and is screenwriting on a couple of projects.

  And I could reveal that 2008 may even see a third variation on my name reaching print, but that’s another story ...

  Ali : Thank you for your time and insight.

  Michael : My pleasure and I appreciate the interest from Shots Ezine.

  More information on Michael Marshall [Smith] is available from:

  www.michaelmarshallsmith.com

  Michael Marshall (Smith) is published in the UK by HarperCollins:

  Only Forward
  Spares
  One of Us
  What you make it
  The Straw Men
  The Lonely Dead
  Blood of Angels
  The Intruders

  Previous articles/interviews with Michael Marshall [Smith] are archived at Shots Ezine :-

  http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/feature_view.aspx?FEATURE_ID=87

  http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/author_profiles/m_marshall02/m_marshall02.html

  http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/shots22/galleries/marshall_gal/marshall.html

  http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/shots22/intvus_22/marshall.html

  http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/marshall.htm

• IMDB - https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1413533/

  Michael Marshall Smith
  Writer | Producer
  Contribute to IMDb. Add a bio, trivia, and more.
  Update information for Michael Marshall Smith »
  Born: May 3, 1965 in Knutsford, Cheshire, England, UK
  More at IMDbPro » Contact Info on IMDbPro Contact Info: View agent
  Quick Links

  Biography
  Awards
  Photo Gallery

  Filmography (by Job)
  Trailers and Videos

  Explore More
  What Movies Do You Want to See This Summer?

  Buzzing comedies such as The Spy Who Dumped Me await you in our Summer Movie Guide. Check in for all the info you need.

  See our Summer Movie Guide
  Related News

  Evolution review – an amphibious dystopia between nightmare and reverie
  05 May 2016 | The Guardian - Film News
  Clive Barker adapting Weaveworld for The CW
  24 September 2015 | Flickeringmyth
  Intruders cancelled after one series
  27 February 2015 | Den of Geek

  See all related articles »
  Projects In Development
  Killer Move
  Details only on IMDbPro »
  Do you have a demo reel?

  Add it to your IMDbPage
  My Demo Reel -- No description provided.My Demo Reel -- Three different genresSara Woo Hosting Reel -- Sara Woo's Hosting Reel covers Film, Food and Travel!
  Find out more at IMDb Pro »
  How Much Have You Seen?
  How much of Michael Marshall Smith's work have you seen?
  User Polls

  poll image The horror...the horror!
  poll image Bear's Best!

  See more polls »
  Known For
  Unbelief
  Unbelief
  Writer
  (2015)
  Killer Move
  Killer Move
  Writer
  Intruders
  Intruders
  Writer
  (2014)
  The Seventeenth Kind
  The Seventeenth Kind
  Writer
  (2014)
  Hide Hide all |
  | Edit
  Filmography
  Jump to: Writer | Producer
  Hide Hide Writer (6 credits)
  2015 Unbelief (Short) (screenplay) / (short story by)
  2014 Intruders (TV Series) (based on the book "The Intruders" by - 8 episodes)
  - There Is No End (2014) ... (based on the book "The Intruders" by)
  - The Crossing Place (2014) ... (based on the book "The Intruders" by)
  - Bound (2014) ... (based on the book "The Intruders" by)
  - The Shepherds and the Fox (2014) ... (based on the book "The Intruders" by)
  - Ave Verum Corpus (2014) ... (based on the book "The Intruders" by)
  Show all 8 episodes
  2014 The Seventeenth Kind (Short) (story)
  2011 Later (Short) (story)
  2002 Cruise of the Gods (TV Movie) (additional material)
  2002 Dare to Believe (TV Series) (additional material)
  Hide Hide Producer (2 credits)
  2015 Unbelief (Short) (executive producer)
  2011 Later (Short) (executive producer)
  Edit
  Personal Details
  Other Works: Novelist
  Official Sites: Official Site
  Alternate Names: Michael Marshall
  Edit
  Did You Know?
  Star Sign: Taurus

• Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Marshall-Smith/e/B000APTPVA

  About Michael Marshall Smith
  Novelist, short story writer and screenwriter, writing under the names Michael Marshall Smith and Michael Marshall. As the former, author of ONLY FORWARD, SPARES, ONE OF US, THE SERVANTS and the upcoming HANNAH GREEN AND HER UNFEASIBLY MUNDANE EXISTENCE. Also winner of the August Derleth, International Horror Guild and Philip K Dick Award -- in addition to winning the British Fantasy Award for best short story more times than any other author in history.

  As Michael Marshall, an internationally-bestselling writer of thrillers including the STRAW MEN trilogy and THE INTRUDERS -- recently televised starring John Simm, Mira Sorvino and Millie Bobby Brown.

  www.michaelmarshallsmith.com

  Twitter @ememess
  Insta @ememess

• January Magazine - https://www.januarymagazine.com/profiles/mmarshall.html

  The Straw Men

  by Michael Marshall

  Published by HarperCollins UK

  384 pages, 2002

  "Novels are such an investment of time and emotional energy. If you're 70,000 words into a book, you've kind of got to stick with it, whereas you can start a short story on a whim and just see if it works. It's no great loss to trash 2,000 words (or at least slip the file into an "In Progress" folder), which gives you the freedom to play with ideas that are too nebulous or out there to frame a novel around. There are also simply many ideas which can be best and most effectively manifested in a short, sharp tale."

  Within the last couple of months, Michael Marshall's debut thriller, The Straw Men, has crawled its way to the top of the British book charts by stealth and strong word-of-mouth. A dark, hypnotic serial-killer yarn, with a panoramic view of the evil that resides in mankind, it has been touted by critics as in the same league with the works of Thomas Harris (Hannibal) and John Connolly (Every Dead Thing). That this book's author isn't quite the neophyte his press might lead you to believe makes The Straw Men's success all the more intriguing.

  The novel tips its hat to both Harris and Stephen King with an opening that has Bach's "The Goldberg Variations" playing on a car radio just before a Regulators-style bloodbath breaks out at a McDonald's in Nowhere, USA. From there, Marshall speeds down two fictional tracks. One is written from the first-person perspective of Ward Hopkins, a drunken ex-CIA type with a shady past who, accompanied by an enigmatic sidekick, "Bobby," is investigating the car-accident death of his parents in Montana. It doesn't take long for Hopkins to realize that pretty much everything he has held dear and true about his past may well be a sham. Meanwhile, third-person sections of The Straw Men detail the hunt for a serial killer who has snatched a Los Angeles teenager named Sarah Becker and is keeping her trapped, without food, beneath his floorboards. Summoned back by his FBI ex-mistress to lead this hunt is burnt-out former homicide cop John Zandt, whose own daughter was snatched -- never to be seen again -- by the very same serial killer, nicknamed "The Delivery Boy" by a hardened media. But is there an even more sinister conspiracy in the works here, linked to a figure of the shadows known only as "The Upright Man"? And is there some connection to be made between Hopkins' investigation and the disappearance of Sarah Becker?

  Marshall's prose is both gripping and haunting, his story's carefully plotted chills worming their way deep into the reader's mind, to rest there uncomfortably, like broken glass. No conventional serial-killer novel, The Straw Men may be too grim for some tastes. Yet it doesn't shock merely for the sake of shocking.

  If the book seems too smoothly executed to be the work of a novice, that's because it isn't. Michael Marshall is really north London resident Michael Marshall Smith, who has been writing novels and short stories for well over 10 years, most of his work being categorized as either science fiction or horror. The Straw Men is his first true crime novel, and in order to escape the pigeonhole he'd found himself in after three previous books, he agreed to abbreviate his byline. "Suddenly, I'm two-thirds the man I used to be," he joked recently in a note to his veteran readers.

  Born in Cheshire, England, in 1965, Smith was still an infant when he moved with his family to the United States, settling first in Illinois and then in Florida. His family later relocated again, this time to South Africa and Australia, before returning to England, where Smith studied philosophy, social science and political science at King's College in Cambridge. As an undergraduate, he became involved with the Cambridge Footlights, a comedy revue that had cultivated such talents as the Monty Python players and led Smith to become involved with the BBC Radio 4 show And Now in Color. It was radio that gave him his first taste of writing for a living. He went on to a career in graphic design, scripting corporate vacuum cleaner videos and ultimately organizing a video festival for graphic design professionals. He's since written a number of film scripts.

  But the itch to pen his own fiction returned after Smith read The Talisman, a 1984 novel by Stephen King and Peter Straub. He started out writing short stories, some of which met with acclaim. "The Man Who Drew Cats," for instance, won the 1991 British Fantasy Society award for Best Short Story, and "The Dark Land" received that same commendation in the following year. These tales were classified as horror/speculative fiction, so it came as something of a surprise (even to him) when his first novel, Only Forward (1994), turned out to be science fiction. The book is a surreal, very funny and noirish look at one possible future, viewed through the eyes of Stark, a reluctant hero sent out to locate a missing person. Sound like a crime plot? Well, that was only to expected, as Smith is a big fan of crime fiction, and cites Jim Thompson, James Ellroy and James Lee Burke as his pivotal influences. Stark's travels take him through a sprawl of city-size neighborhoods, each catering to a particular variety of resident -- corporate sorts in one neighborhood, deranged criminals in another, etc. The book was well received by readers and critics alike, picking up the August Derleth Award for Best Novel in 1995.

  Smith broke new ground with his second novel, Spares (1996), a darkly prophetic tale of human cloning and genetic manipulation that, by fortunate happenstance, was released just as the first cloned animal -- a sheep named Dolly -- made headlines. The story follows Jack Randall and his escape from the "Spares Farm," where clones are kept in case their real "selves" ever need an extra organ or limb. The novel is set in "New Richmond," Virginia, a futuristic city built atop what remained of the former U.S. state capital after two months of riots. It was rumored a few years ago that director Steven Spielberg was interested in filming either Spares or Philip K. Dick's 1956 short story, "Minority Report," as a follow-up to his movie A.I. (I guess you know which production got the green light). Ironically, Smith's Only Forward went on to win the Philip K. Dick Award for Best Novel in 2001 -- the same year it was published in the United States.

  After Spares came One of Us (1998), a Dick-type novel about memory and dreams. Its protagonist, Hap Thompson, stumbles upon a conspiracy while working as an REMtemp -- a nocturnal caretaker who looks after other people's bad dreams and remembrances. The plot centers on Hap's search for a missing woman, one of whose dreams involved a real murder that may unlock a far-reaching menace to the history and future of mankind. In the year after this third novel saw print, Smith's award-winning short stories were collected in a volume entitled What You Make It, which was published to much acclaim.

  I was fortunate to catch up with Michael Marshall Smith in London, not long after the U.S. paperback-only release of The Straw Men. We talked about his making the leap from science fiction to the crime genre, the death of horror fiction, his often frustrating efforts as a screenwriter, and why in the world he should want to add yet another title to the towering stack of modern serial-killer novels.

  Ali Karim: Would you care to describe The Straw Men, for those people who haven't yet read it?

  Michael Marshall Smith: I guess it's most obviously my take on the serial-killer phenomenon, both in itself and as regards our reaction to it. But more broadly, it's an attempt to look at wider aspects of human nature and to try to put them in a new context, to view humankind in a longer-range perspective. That may sound kind of heavy, but those elements of the book are subsumed within a story about the kind of things that happen to real people, a story that I hope is exciting and entertaining.

  Your book has won some rave reviews, not only from Stephen King in the U.S., but also from Mark Timlin in The Independent, Maxim Jakubowski at The Guardian, and Shots magazine. How do you feel about that reception?

  Literally incredible. I genuinely couldn't believe it. King has long been a hero of mine, one of my very favorite authors, and definitely the person whose work started me thinking that writing was a job I wanted for myself. When my agent called to say a quote had come in from him, and went on to read it to me, it felt -- cliché or not -- like a dream coming true. I actually had to e-mail [my agent] later in the evening to get him to confirm that I hadn't imagined the entire conversation. For that to be followed by great reviews from people I respect as much as Jakubowski and Timlin was truly wonderful. Publication can be an anxious time, especially if you've just tried to switch genres. It was very reassuring to get some good early feedback.

  Why choose a story about serial killers as your first foray into the crime genre?

  I've long nurtured an interest in them. Not so much in recent years, but there was a period back in the early 1990s when I read a lot of non-fiction around the subject, and started to develop some theories about ways in which the minds of serial killers might work. It seemed to me that such murderers were too often being presented either as burlesque monsters or glamorous geniuses -- neither of which is the case. It also struck me that they are part of a collection of things about human behavior which we like to compartmentalize, pretending they can be fenced off as pure "evil," thus having no implication for the rest of us. I wrote a couple of short stories about them, and then largely moved on to other things. But when I started thinking about the themes and issues I was going to be covering in The Straw Men, I realized that this was finally going to be my chance to try to get into the subject in a deeper way. I guess I just think that serial killers say quite a lot about how the human mind works, and how it goes wrong.

  The granddaddy of the fictional serial killer subgenre has to be Thomas Harris. What were your feelings on reading Hannibal?

  I enjoyed it very much, actually. I'd never read much Harris -- I think I'd read Red Dragon a few years previously, and seen the movies, and that's about it. I liked the pervading sense of dread and melancholy in Hannibal, which I thought Ridley Scott's film captured pretty well, especially through the choice of music. When I read the book, I'd heard in my head Gould's sprightlier rendition of the "Goldberg" theme, but that ultra-slow, mechanical, damaged-sounding version was just perfect. I thought the book as a whole captured a great sense of maniacal calm and wistful fury, a doom-laden sense of winding down. I could have lived without the backstory stuff, but I loved the pedal-to-the-metal darkness of the ending -- and went back and read the previous novels as a result. Dr. Lecter may not be the world's most realistic serial killer, but he certainly captures [one's] attention.

  Were you at all apprehensive about tackling a project as ambitious as The Straw Men?

  No, not really. I go wandering off into each book with the vague assumption that this time it will be a piece of cake. It never is, but there's always a lot of fun along the way -- along with the periods where giving it all up and becoming a tap dancer seems like a much better idea. I think that it's reaching for things that helps you do a little more than you thought you were capable of.

  Did you believe that this new novel would do as well as it has?

  I hoped it would do OK, certainly. I think you have to. It'd be a strange old writer who finished a book and handed it in thinking, Well, that's not much good. Can't see that doing well. Experience has shown that this early bright-eyed optimism is soon dimmed by the realities of fate and the market, but I did hope that with The Straw Men I'd brought the stuff that I do best to a genre where it might be accessible to greater numbers of people. I think there's been a gothic thriller trying to push its way out of me for a long time.

  I read that your title, The Straw Men, was inspired by Douglas Winter, the horror enthusiast who released a crime novel a few years back called Run. How did that come about?

  I know Doug from the horror field. I was sitting in a pub with him, his wife, Lynn, and Stephen Jones, the horror anthologist. We were talking about gun control in the U.S. -- I have no idea why -- and Doug described the "straw purchase" process by which many illegal handguns are obtained. If you're too young, unlicensed or too self-evidently insane to buy one yourself, you get someone who passes all the required criteria -- the "straw purchaser" -- to go in the store and get it for you. This notion of bad or good being done on behalf of others resonated in my mind, and I soon saw how it fitted with some of the ideas I was playing with for my next novel. It gave me a title, too, which is often the first step towards really believing you know where you're going.

  I guess the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., must have occurred while you were working on the last drafts of The Straw Men. How did hearing about those incidents affect you?

  The primary effect was visceral, as with most people. I was sitting at my desk, trying to work, and my wife called down that she'd just heard on the radio that a plane had crashed into the [World Trade Center]. I thought, Christ!, and tried to get back on with what I was doing. In retrospect, I think somehow the news was so weird that it didn't actually go in properly -- and we'd had a weird few days anyway, for a variety of reasons. Then she shouted something about it having happened again ... and so we ran downstairs and got CNN on. Sat and watched it for the rest of the day. There was a point when the first tower collapsed and I thought, Jesus. There was a nuke on board. This is the end times. It's all over. I called my parents. Several friends called me. It was one of those days when suddenly everything seems utterly different, when you realize that death and disaster are horribly real.

  I'd finished The Straw Men several months previously, but when it came to do the final edit, 9/11 was obviously something I had to bear in mind. In a horrible way the event seemed to bear out much of what I'd been trying to express in the novel, and it was strange to read it again and see how close I'd come to the subject. On a practical level, the world will never be quite the same again after that morning, and so I had to tweak a few things here and there to try to reflect this. I don't think 9/11 will always be at the forefront of our minds, and nor should it be, but there's a definite before and after.

  It's amusing to see how life works in circles. When John Connolly's debut novel, Every Dead Thing, came out [in 1999], his publishers put a sticker on the cover saying, "As good as Thomas Harris or your money back." Now, The Straw Men has one that says, "As good as John Connolly or your money back." What do you make of that? And have you read Connolly?

  I've read John Connolly, yes, and think he's stunning. I was reading quite a lot of crime and thriller material at the time Every Dead Thing came out, preparing myself for trying one of my own, and was largely disappointed. A lot of the big guys don't seem to care about the individual sentences at all, which means their books are of no use to me. If I don't enjoy the language of a book, I just won't read it. Life's too short. I can't remember how I came across Connolly's first one, but within a few chapters I remember thinking, Wow -- this is what I'm talking about. I now wait for a new novel of his with real impatience.

  As for the comparison ... well, being mentioned in the same sentence as a great writer is never a hardship. I'd like to make it clear that it's the publisher who gets to give the money back, though. Don't start coming after me waving your copies and demanding cash.

  How did your British and American publishers view your jumping over the science fiction "fence" and ending up in the crime thriller camp?

  They took it remarkably well -- the UK publishers, anyway. Jane Johnson, my UK editor, has always been extremely supportive and remarkably relaxed about letting me more or less do what I liked. I think Jane saw the book as I did: part of the same body of work as the earlier novels, merely set in the present day rather than the future. My then-U.S. publishers were a little more confused by it. Both Spares and One of Us had been published as mystery, despite being set in the future. Then they brought out my first novel, Only Forward, which they published as science fiction. Then came The Straw Men, and I think it was like, "Will the author please work out what the fuck he is writing, please ..." Some of the initial response in Europe has been the same. Many of the publishers who'd been with me over the last two or three books have evidently decided that The Straw Men just isn't what they were expecting. It's a great shame, because I think a lot of authors would quite like the chance to mix and match a little, but the publishing industry just isn't set up for it -- not least because most readers aren't either. I guess I'd be the same. If James Lee Burke suddenly brought out some SF, I might not immediately leap for my credit card ... though I'd probably buy it in the end, and almost certainly like it.

  Explain to me the reason for truncating your name.

  This was mooted by my editor at my new U.S. publisher, Susan Allison. The initial spur came from the discovery that the book Straw Men, by Martin J. Smith, had just been published. The similarity between that and The Straw Men, by a Michael Marshall Smith, was just too close -- and even a little spooky. It was a bit of a pain, to be honest, as I'd gone to the trouble of checking that there was no book of that title before I started mine. Once the idea of changing my name had been mentioned, and I'd got used to the notion, I began to realize that there might be upsides to it. It's far from impossible that I'll want to write a stranger, more "out there" kind of book, or simply a SF novel again, and having the Michael Marshall Smith name to do that under will be very useful. It's evidently just too confusing for readers and publishers for their authors to genre-hop under the same name.

  So you will continue in the crime genre as "Michael Marshall"?

  I'm here to stay, I'm afraid. I'm just in the process of signing contracts with both Berkley in the U.S. and HarperCollins in the UK for two more Michael Marshall novels.

  By the way, did you ever read Martin J. Smith's Straw Men, which has been nominated this year for a Barry Award?

  I haven't, actually. I'm not sure it's available in the UK. I've heard good things about it, though.

  What are your thoughts on "genre borders" and "classifications," both from a UK and U.S. perspective?

  They seem particularly restrictive in the U.S., where the genre of a book is actually stamped on the spine. At least in the UK it's still down to the individual bookstore's discretion -- which means that I still find my previous novels on mainstream, SF, crime or "whatever" shelves. The problem is, that's a good thing from the perspective of an author, who may not think of his or her work as being contained within one particular subdivision. But for the poor reader who just wants to be able to find the damned book, maybe it's not so helpful. The genre classification I like best is simply "noir," because I think it can cover such a wide range of material -- crime, horror, futuristic, even literary fiction. That's where I feel at home.

  I've talked to various booksellers about how the horror genre is, for all intents and purposes, dead -- except for King, Dean Koontz and Buffy -- and that "dark crime" is taking off, with works by Mo Hayder, Tess Gerritsen, John Connolly, Mark Billingham and yourself. Do you agree?

  I think there's a lot of truth in that. It's interesting to see how crime is finding itself able to make use of some of those gothic conventions -- Lee Burke's done it, too, with the use of the quasi-supernatural in books like In the Electric Mist With the Confederate Dead -- just at a time when the horror genre is having such a hard time of it. I can't help feeling that many of horror's problems are of its own making. With the exception of writers like Stephen King, Peter Straub, Ramsey Campbell, Kim Newman and a very few others, it allowed itself to wander into the realms of pastiche, incompetence and pointless visceral violence. Not many people really want to read that kind of thing. They want real characters and real story, want some genuine emotional content. Dark crime is providing that at the moment, and horror isn't. That'll change though, I'm sure. There are subtle anthologists like Stephen Jones, Ellen Datlow and Peter Crowther out there, keeping the good stuff alive, along with publishers like Subterranean, Cemetery Dance and Earthling. Horror is a venerable and resilient genre. It'll come back when you least expect it, will suddenly be looming outside your back door in the dead of night.

  In One of Us, your lead character was named Hap Thompson and you quoted Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me at the start of Spares. Could you talk about your associations with Jim Thompson and his work?

  I discovered Thompson about six years ago, in the most superficial way possible: I saw a beautiful Vintage paperback of one of his novels, and bought it on looks alone. I soon discovered this had been a very happy chance, and have now read just about everything else [by him]. I love his work. There's a sparse and easy, just-the-facts style which pulls you in, hiding for quite a while just how deeply he's getting under your skin -- and some of [his stories] waltz off into some very strange territories by the end. I've actually taken to making sure that I'm reading or re-reading a Thompson for the first book whenever I go away on vacation. They're so much off in a world of their own that it helps ease the transition out of London life into the great unknown.

  What about James Ellroy or Lee Burke?

  Thompson turned me onto crime, and so I looked around to see what else there was. I discovered Ellroy through The Black Dahlia and was just stunned by what he'd pulled off in that book: the vertiginous, pounding detail and the pull-you-through-it plot, yet somehow swerving into such a lyric and heartfelt ending. I've since read everything else he's done, several times. I couldn't do what he does, and I'm not actually sure I'd want to, but I sure as hell love reading it. Lee Burke was another happy find, from another part of the spectrum altogether. Superb emotional economy underlying great lyricism. I discovered both of these writers just before I started writing Spares, and I'm sure both had an affect on that novel.

  Let's talk about your upbringing for a minute. What affect did it have on you to move between so many different countries?

  I think the primary affect it had was to produce a feeling of being a privileged outsider, and also a slight state of homelessness. Basically, what happened was that we left England when I was very young, lived in the U.S. for seven years, then South Africa for a year, Australia for a year and then came back to the UK. In all the time we were away I was aware that I wasn't a native of the country I was in, but at the same time felt very much a part of them -- especially America, which I now regard very much as a second homeland. Noir characters very often have exactly this kind of relationship to their environments, and so it's possible that this element of my writing was at least partly inspired though my upbringing. Such a childhood either tends to make you want to find one home and stick to it, or gives you a bad and permanent case of itchy-footed wanderlust. With me, it's definitely the latter.

  I read that as an adult, you spent a year or so traveling the United States. What were your experiences, and how might they have influenced your writing?

  It wasn't a whole year, sadly! I'd love to do exactly that, and in fact one of the books I'm intermittently reading -- re-reading, if the truth be known -- is William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways, about the author's meanderings along America's less-well-known back roads. I've visited America many, many times, but the longest I've been able to do in a stretch was the month which my wife and I spent driving from Boston to L.A., a couple of years ago. We didn't exactly take the most direct route, but with a country that vast and that fascinating, you need a hell of a lot longer than that to even start getting to know it. The most direct affect that trip had on my writing was that two of the towns in The Straw Men -- Dyersburg and Palmerston -- were loosely based on places we passed through. I think my acquaintance with and love of the country certainly has a long-term affect.

  You started writing while at Cambridge. Could you talk about that period?

  I listened to a lot of radio comedy as a child, and went up to college intending to do two things: get into the Cambridge Footlights -- the club which spawned Monty Python, amongst others -- and start a band. The comedy ended up taking so much time, I never got around to the band. I wrote revues, pantomimes, stuff like that, and after college had a couple of radio series on the BBC. I didn't start writing genre fiction until the very end of a tour I undertook with the Footlights at the end of my time at college. Theater tours tend to leave you with a lot of time on your hands during the day. I'd just discovered Stephen King, and steadily read everything that was available. The tour ended with three weeks in Edinburgh, and one day I saw a little incident which led to me writing my first short story ["The Man Who Drew Cats"].

  What sort of incident was that?

  I was sitting in this one particular area of town (I forget what it's called -- Prince's Street, I think) and watching the world go by. There were tourists, actors from plays, street theater people, even someone playing the bagpipes for a while, I think. I was watching some of the goings-on with half an eye, and happened to notice a guy who was doing a big chalk drawing on the ground. It wasn't actually terribly good, as I remember, but then I heard -- from some distance away -- the sound of a young boy crying. The two things just sort of collided in my mind, and half of the short story plopped into my head fully formed. As that story went on to win me the British Fantasy Awards for Best Short Fiction and Best Newcomer, has been reprinted about eight times and probably started the whole thing off, I guess I feel pretty lucky that I happened to be sitting in that square at that particular moment.

  You have quite an arsenal of short stories that are not really SF. Could you say a little about them?

  I guess they'd be characterized as "horror," though they tend to be tales of unease, weirdness, rather than full-on vampires and monsters. I've actually written very few SF short stories. Of the 50-odd that I've done, I think only about four are set in the future. That's another of the reasons I was keen to write a present-day novel: the bulk of my writing has always been set in the now, and I wanted to try to being the different strands of my stuff -- the novels and the short stories -- closer together.

  For you, the difference between writing short stories and novels is ...

  Um ... length? Stupid answer, maybe, but that's the heart of it. Novels are such an investment of time and emotional energy. If you're 70,000 words into a book, you've kind of got to stick with it, whereas you can start a short story on a whim and just see if it works. It's no great loss to trash 2,000 words (or at least slip the file into an "In Progress" folder), which gives you the freedom to play with ideas that are too nebulous or out there to frame a novel around. There are also simply many ideas which can be best and most effectively manifested in a short, sharp tale. I believe that most of the best work in horror, for example, is done in the short story. Sometimes that's just the perfect length to get in, tell a story or conjure a notion, and then get back out again before you start outstaying your welcome.

  You have won numerous awards early on in your career. What impact has that had on you and your works?

  I had an extraordinarily fortunate early run with awards, winning the British Fantasy Award for Best Newcomer in 1990, the Best Short Story Award in 1990, 1991 and 1996, and the Best Novel Award -- for Only Forward -- in 1995. There were a few World Fantasy Award nominations in that period, too. Then it all went rather quiet until last year, when I won the Philip K. Dick Award, again for Only Forward -- which had only just come out in paperback in the U.S. Awards are lovely to have, because they in effect say, "There are people out there who like what you do," which can be exactly the boost you need to keep you going, especially at the beginning. But you've also got to accept that they can be related to fashion, and cliques -- the Booker being a very obvious example -- and that not winning awards doesn't mean that you're not any good.

  Spares has been your most successful novel to date. Could you tell me a little about its inception and realization?

  I think Spares was the novel where I started to marshal what I was doing. A first novel is very often a kind of spasm of creativity, just grabbing what's in your head and getting it down. That was certainly my experience with Only Forward, which came to me very easily. With Spares, I'd just started reading some crime and started to feel myself pulled in that direction. It was also the dreaded second novel, and so very hard work at times. The basic story is about cloning, about the idea that in the future the wealthy might take out an ultimate life insurance [policy] for their children by having them cloned at conception to provide a future spare parts bank. The timing was very fortuitous -- I finished the book about three weeks before the news about Dolly the sheep was announced. Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks optioned the novel. It never made it out the other side of the development process -- or at least, hasn't yet -- but the whole thing certainly put my career on a slightly more solid footing.

  Most of your novels, in fact, have been optioned for the movies. Any interest in The Straw Men?

  There've been some rumblings, but nothing concrete yet. We'll see.

  Didn't you spend a number of years writing screenplays yourself?

  I'm still doing it, actually, but I think it's something I'm going to take a little break from soon. I've always loved films, especially horror films, and have been coming up with ideas for them at least as long as I've been writing prose. I've been screenwriting for about nine years, on and off. In that time, I've only written one original script -- something called Where the Children Went, which I'd like to get back to at some stage. The rest have all been adaptations of other people's work. I've worked on Modesty Blaise, Solomon Kane, Robert Faulcon's Nighthunter and Jay Russell's Celestial Dogs, for various clients. Though the script I'm writing at the moment -- Friends For Ever -- is an original, too.

  You also worked on a screenplay of Clive Barker's Weaveworld, didn't you?

  Weaveworld was the very first screenwriting I ever did, and was a superb introduction to both the good and bad sides of the industry. Clive was great to work with -- extremely supportive and friendly -- and Weaveworld is a modern classic. I was delighted and honored to be working on the project. My adaptation was for an eight-hour miniseries, which is a hell of a lot of script, and the initial whirlwind of trying to reassure people that I was the right guy for the job was very exciting. Problem was, it continued at that pitch for 18 months, the project ran into personality differences so large I'm surprised they weren't featured on the television news, there were too many opinions to be catered to at every step of the process, and I ended up getting royally stiffed on my fee. In the end, everything over-ran so long that I was unable to do the second draft, because I was already late starting a novel. That's the film world, I'm afraid: exciting, certainly, but very often a frustrating pain in the ass.

  What differentiates the screenwriting process from etching out a novel?

  The jobs are about as dissimilar as two tasks could be, while sharing the same basic activity -- i.e., telling stories by typing. The fact that almost nobody has managed to make a success of writing in both media perhaps tells its own story: even the much-vaunted William Goldman hasn't really been a novelist in a very long time. Just about every single thing is different. The way in which stories are put across, the different tricks and tools which you do -- or don't -- have at your disposal, the process of writing itself ... they're very different disciplines. The key thing, perhaps, is that with books you can tell people things, whereas in movies you generally have to show. Though, of course, it can be very effective to switch the two around, every now and then.

  But surely you must have some favorite screenwriting memories.

  None to shout about, to be honest. I've enjoyed screenwriting, enjoyed the challenge and some of the people I've met while doing it. I've enjoyed spending time in Hollywood and occasionally getting that "Hey -- it's really going to happen!" feeling. Thing is, it never has actually happened -- and an awful lot of time has spiraled down the screenplay chute in the meantime, with little to show for it except money. Money's important, of course, but it doesn't make something worthwhile and doesn't pay the emotional bills. I'm thinking that I'd rather have a few more live books on the shelf than dead scripts on the hard disk. I'm sure I'll go back to screenwriting, but in my own time, and for my own amusement. And actually, the experience of writing the script I'm on at the moment has been pretty good.

  One of the frequent themes of your fiction is how the past shapes the future. You explore that theme at several levels in The Straw Men, both on the micro level, with the secrets of Ward Hopkins' upbringing, and on the macro level, spanning the dawn of Man. Why does the past intrigue you so much?

  The past is what we're about, both as individuals and as a species. There's such a modern obsession with what's happened in the last 2,000 years, last century, last year, last five minutes -- and it's getting worse. Creatures exactly like us have been wandering the planet for many tens of thousands of years. Don't you think that the way things were back beyond the dawn of television might still have an impact upon us? Time drops like a curtain of dust, occluding us from much of the information that would help us understand both our culture and the people we meet. I find that process interesting. I want to remove some of that dust -- even if I have to be very speculative to do it.

  And yet you left Hopkins' history with the CIA so vague. Why?

  I revealed everything I thought was relevant at the time. I'm not a big fan of books which give you the soup-to-nuts on a character straight off the bat. It can feel a little too much like a god POV, reminding you that you're reading a work of fiction in which the author is in charge of everything and can give you the bottom line of a character right away. That's not the way it happens in real life, is it? You meet someone, they reveal what they choose to reveal -- and you make a few intuitive guesses of your own about them. You then deal with them on the basis of what you think you know, gradually learning how much of it is true, and what stuff might be hidden below the surface ... I like books to have something of that flavor about them, and wrote a very unreliable narrator in my very first novel, Only Forward. I don't want everything in a neatly labeled box first time around. People like that are boring. So are characters. Of course, a little bit of "vagueness" also leaves your creative options a little looser, should you wish to return to a character at any time.

  Morality is another theme that you often hit, whether it involves Jack Randall in Spares or Hopkins' parents in The Straw Men. Could you comment on your interest in morality issues?

  Morality is like a part of the human mind made semi-flesh, a tantalizingly nebulous attempt to say something concrete about how we think we should be able to live with each other. Whenever I write, and whatever the subject, it's human nature that I'm generally most interested in examining. What is morality? Can anything objective be said about it, and should we even try? Do our attempts to do so reflect most upon our good or bad sides? Is it all, ultimately, anything more than something that can be swept aside with a single shot from a handgun? This is what life is about, I think, and in particular what crime fiction is about: the eternal, grubby verities of life. Love, greed, death -- none of which can be considered for long without questions of morality shouldering their way in.

  The establishment and role of community plays a notable part in your stories, as well, whether it's the neighborhoods in Only Forward or the millionaires' fortified estates in The Straw Men. Give me your take on the role of community in our lives.

  The notion of community is central to The Straw Men, and I think it's going to be a subject which the world confronts in new and strange ways over the coming years. From the loose virtual conglomerations on the Internet, to the increasing compartmentalization of the real world, the changes in the way we use geographical space, and the rising way in which our social or ideological "communities" are being used as rallying calls and battering rams in a post-9/11 world -- the notion of community (in both positive and negative senses) is going to be key.

  You use the Internet to good effect in The Straw Men, without resorting to too much techno-terror. Could you share your thoughts about that electronic global forum and its uses? And what's this I hear about your being addicted to webcams?

  I do like webcams, I must admit. I'd like to stress that these aren't the ones where young -- or not so young -- ladies take their clothes off. I like those which show some unimportant street corner, or patch of road, or a small corner of a not very attractive pond somewhere. I respond to these vistas in the same way as the kind of views you see on a train journey, where you see the backs of things, the bits no one's bothered to beautify or frame, little bits of the world without any attempt to contextualize, explain or smarten up. It's just there. I don't know why, but I like that.

  I find the Internet useful primarily for grabbing endless bits of software I don't need, tracking down the occasional book, checking out potential hotels and keeping in contact with far-flung people. I've yet to find it much use for anything else. ... There was a lot of brave talk at the beginning about "information wanting to be free." I haven't seen much evidence of that. I see a lot of spam, a lot of self-interested misinformation and a lot of nonsense being talked. I see a lot of people reveling in "having their say," without the editorial constraints of peer review or having to prove that they have any idea what they're talking about. Sometimes the Internet seems like a vast room full of narrow-minded people all shouting at once.

  But I'm also beginning to see some real publications of quality emerging, free from the often random constraints of commerciality, and there are sites related to specific subjects which can be life-savers to people going through particular kinds of experiences. We're still in a Wild West period, where the shysters and snake-oil merchants outnumber the steady citizens. But that will change, and the world will never be the same again. We are going to have to be careful, though: As I try to suggest in The Straw Men, people with like interests being able to congregate in virtual communities ain't always going to be a good thing. I also think [the Web] has the potential to breed a kind of relationship-without-moral-responsibility, which I don't think is entirely positive.

  You pepper your works with conspiracy theories, like that involving The Upright Man in The Straw Men. Are you a "Grassy Knoll" type of guy?

  Like a lot of people, I often find conspiracy theories rather seductive. There's something very attractive about the idea that everything about the world -- particularly the bits you find confusing or frightening or objectionable -- has an easy explanation. It's the search for the mythic bad guy, the men in the black hats, the devil in disguise. It's also an attempt, fundamentally, to reduce the world's complexity to something the paranoid can understand. I actually don't believe very many [such theories], but enjoy them as fiction -- they appeal to the "what if?" instinct in me. I will always take any piece of paper that a nutter tries to hand me in the street. I find them fascinating. I've got a great one on the fridge at the moment, from some guy who claims that he basically wrote all of the music there is -- from ABBA to march music, jazz to classical -- but is being stiffed on royalties by The Government. And again, I just think, "Well, what if ...?"

  Speaking of conspiracy theories, where did you get the idea for the "Straw Man Manifesto" you use in this latest novel?

  I was sitting wondering one day why humankind might have started farming, and an idea came into my head. That manifesto -- a short portion in the middle of the book, where the bad guys' philosophy is laid out -- was one of the main reasons I started writing the novel in the first place. The more I thought about it, the more fun the ideas seemed to be. It was from this small and apparently tangential area that much of the main underlying material of the book started to flow. I'm not saying the ideas are in the least bit true, of course, but you never know ... I've got a good friend who's currently studying to be an archaeologist, and toeing the party line, and I also enjoy making this stuff up just to annoy him.

  So what are you working on currently?

  I'm writing the second draft of this original horror movie, Friends For Ever. I'm writing that for an English production company called Shine, and for the director Nick Hamm, and the experience has been very good so far. I've also been working this year with the BBC on an idea of mine called CityScape, which would be for a six-part television series based around a 2,000-year conspiracy at the heart of London. There're a couple of short stories under way, and as soon as this movie draft is done, I'm going to be starting on the next Michael Marshall book.

  I know this may be premature, but can you say a little about what the next Michael Marshall novel will entail?

  I could -- but I'm afraid I'm not going to! I'm more superstitious about upcoming work than you'd believe. I just won't talk about it. I can tell you that the next book is going to involve some of the same characters as The Straw Men, and that it will take the ideas both deeper and wider. Also, that if I get it right, it could turn quite a few notions on their head ... but we'll see.

  Finally, if I was to check out your reading pile right now, what would I find?

  I'm dividing my time between re-reading The Cold Six Thousand, by James Ellroy, The Fields Beneath, by Gillian Trindall, and Simulacra and Simulation, by Jean Baudrillard. | October 2002

  Ali Karim is an industrial chemist and freelance journalist living in England. He contributes to Shots and the Deadly Pleasures Web site, and is currently working on his latest novel, Wreaths, a very violent techno-thriller set in the world of plant viruses and out-of-work espionage agents. He is also, incidentally, looking for a publisher.

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Print Marked Items
The Anomaly
Alan Keep
Booklist.
114.18 (May 15, 2018): p33. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
The Anomaly.
By Michael Rutger.
June 2018. 352p. illus. Grand Central, $26 (9781538761854); e-book, $13.99 (9781538761847).
Rutgers first novel follows Nolan Moore, an internet personality and "rogue archaeologist" who hosts The Anomaly Files, a web series on the paranormal. After receiving funding from a mysterious foundation to take the series to network format, Nolan and his crew, along with a journalist and a representative of the foundation, travel to the Grand Canyon to investigate a mysterious lost cavern supposedly found by G. E. Kincaid around the end of the nineteenth century. As they journey deeper into the cavern and uncover more and more mysterious and bizarre artifacts, Nolan and his team are drawn into a dark and sinister plot that reaches back into the depths of human history and threatens to be the end of not only The Anomaly Files but, possibly, their lives. Mixing a brisk and engaging narrative with strongly developed characters, Rutger deftly depicts the claustrophobic depths explored by the endangered expedition. The Anomaly should appeal to fans of The X-Files or Fringe as well as anyone looking for an enjoyable supernatural tale.--Alan Keep
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Keep, Alan. "The Anomaly." Booklist, 15 May 2018, p. 33. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A541400846/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=7055c749. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A541400846
1 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
The Anomaly
Publishers Weekly.
265.17 (Apr. 23, 2018): p65. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* The Anomaly
Michael Rutger. Grand Central, $26 (352p) ISBN 978-1-5387-6185-4
Fans of the paranormal thrillers of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child will relish this superior debut from screenwriter Rutger, who makes the fantastic seem less so by dint of his self-aware, flawed lead and his ability to inject gallows humor into tense situations. Nolan Moore hosts The Anomaly Files, a YouTube show dedicated to exploring unexplained phenomena, but he and his team hope for bigger things after the Palinhem Foundation--whose mission is truth, according to a foundation representative who goes by the name Feather--sponsors an expedition that could land the show a cable deal. Nolan and his colleagues, accompanied by Feather, travel from Los Angeles to the Grand Canyon to attempt to locate a cavern allegedly found by an early-20th- century expedition sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution, which later suppressed the expedition's discovery of "evidence that North America was visited in eldritch times by another culture." Nolan and gang succeed in finding the cavern, only to encounter incredible--and terrifying--objects that place their lives in jeopardy. Rutger milks every ounce of suspense from his plot. Agent: Jennifer Joel, ICM Partners. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Anomaly." Publishers Weekly, 23 Apr. 2018, p. 65. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A536532886/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=3aec579c. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A536532886
2 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Rutger, Michael: THE ANOMALY
Kirkus Reviews.
(Apr. 15, 2018): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Rutger, Michael THE ANOMALY Grand Central Publishing (Adult Fiction) $26.00 6, 19 ISBN: 978-1-5387-6185-4
An online reality show goes looking for a long-rumored cave in the Grand Canyon, with horrific consequences.
Nolan Moore is the host of a show in which he and his crew investigate phenomena and tall tales respectable archaeologists have long since dismissed. For their latest outing, the group is joined by a flaky representative of the foundation underwriting their work (the character's name is actually Feather) and an investigative journalist determined to expose Nolan as a charlatan. Their source is a newspaper account from more than 100 years ago claiming discovery of a cave high up in the walls of the Grand Canyon containing artifacts that suggest a lost civilization. The team has no trouble finding the cave--and anyone who's been to a horror movie in, say, the past 40 years will know that that's only the beginning of their troubles. What follows is a mishmash of Indiana Jones, hoo-hah about the unearthing of long-buried secrets, and the type of horror movies (The Descent and Bone Tomahawk are recent examples) in which a small band of characters are picked off one by one by at-first-unseen adversaries. There are betrayals, feats of sacrificial courage, and survivors who emerge with Secret Knowledge Which Cannot Be Spoken Of. It's mildly engrossing, appropriately icky, very familiar, and wholly ludicrous.
Readers will see so much of the action coming that they'll wonder why the characters can't.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Rutger, Michael: THE ANOMALY." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2018. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A534375200/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=d10de860. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A534375200
3 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Rutger, Michael.: The Anomaly
Cynde Suite
Xpress Reviews.
(June 29, 2018): From Book Review Index Plus.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Suite, Cynde. "Rutger, Michael.: The Anomaly." Xpress Reviews, 29 June 2018. Book Review
Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A546502460/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=12f48db2. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A546502460
4 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Smith, Michael Marshall. More
Tomorrow and Other Stories
Regina Schroeder
Booklist.
100.6 (Nov. 15, 2003): p589. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2003 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Dec. 2003. 488p. Earthling, 12 Pheasant Hill Dr., Shrewsbury, MA 01545, $40 (0-9744203-0-1).
Reprinted or new, Smith's hauntingly nasty stories are laced with an odd sort of beauty. In one of the new stories, "Being Right," a man dissatisfied with his marriage finds a book, Hopes of a Lesser Demon, Part II, that allows him to summon up an angel to prove, in any given dispute, whether or not he is correct (lacking such proof is the cause of much of his marital frustration). "When God Lived in Kentish Town," another little gem, depicts God's junk shop in the center of Kentish Town, Following in a fine horror tradition is the murky, Lovecraftian "To See the Sea," in which a town is populated by Lovecraft's favorite sort of vile things from under the sea, the kind that crawled through H. P.'s classic "The Shadow over Innsmouth." The volume is framed by horror specialist editor Stephen Jones' introduction an( Smith's afterword, "On Not Writing," which reviews the trials, tribulations, and processes of a writer's work.
Schroeder, Regina
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Schroeder, Regina. "Smith, Michael Marshall. More Tomorrow and Other Stories." Booklist, 15
Nov. 2003, p. 589. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc /A111465667/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=706e20ef. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A111465667
5 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Smith, Michael Marshall. More
Tomorrow & Other Stories
Jackie Cassada
Library Journal.
129.3 (Feb. 15, 2004): p167. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Earthling. 2003. c.488p. ISBN 0-9744203-0 $40. HORROR
From a harrowing tale about a deadly, fast-acting disease and a dating group of people who open a door to the afterlife ("Hell Hath Enlarged Herself") to a brief but precisely written essay on the art of storytelling ("On Not Writing"), Smith demonstrates his quirky and emotive approach to the art of short fiction. This collection of 31 selections includes previously published material-- such as "The Man Who Drew Cats" about an artist's special talent, and A Place To Stay" about a unique Halloween encounter in New Orleans--as well as several new pieces. Intelligent, hard- hitting horror and eerie suspense make this a good selection for horror and short fiction collections.
Jackie Cassada Asheville-Buncombe Lib. Syst., NC Cassada, Jackie
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Cassada, Jackie. "Smith, Michael Marshall. More Tomorrow & Other Stories." Library Journal,
15 Feb. 2004, p. 167. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc /A113897065/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=88cfee63. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A113897065
6 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
The Servants
Charles De Lint
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
113.4-5 (October-November 2007): p27+. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2007 Spilogale, Inc.
http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/
Full Text:
The Servants, by Michael Marshall Smith, Earthling Publications, 2007, $30.
I think of Michael Marshall Smith as the quintessential sf writer (yes, I know he writes thrillers as Michael Marshall, but I'm slow and haven't caught up with those books yet), so I was surprised to find him penning this quiet, tender, and deeply personal story of an eleven-year-old boy's coming of age in a decidedly mainstream setting.
Let me quickly note that when I say "deeply personal," I'm referring to how the story relates to the characters. I have no idea how, or even if, this fits into Smith's own history.
And I also feel I need to add that this is an adult book about an eleven-year-old, not a book aimed at that general age group.
It's winter in Brighton, England, a place where Mark and his parents used to holiday. His mother would shop in the little stores, they'd wander along the boardwalk, they'd have Chinese take-out ... all in all, a pleasant break from their lives in London.
Now Mark and his mother have moved to Brighton, along with her new husband, David. Mark resents his stepfather. His mother seems to be sick a lot and David doesn't appear to be doing anything to help except--so far as Mark is concerned--do everything wrong.
Mark takes refuge in trying to master jumps on his skateboard.
It's lonely out on the cold beachfront, and he's bruised from head to toe from his falls off the board, but it still seems better than spending any time in the miserable house to which David has brought them, and where Mark's mother seems to get sicker each day.
Then Mark meets the old lady who lives in the basement apartment of the house and he discovers that the past isn't quite so distant as one might assume.
Smith has done a terrific job with this book, perfectly capturing the confused and sometimes belligerent mindset of his young protagonist while still keeping him likable. It helps that the reader clues in long before Mark about what's happening to his mother--it allows us to feel more sympathy for him--but that doesn't make it any happier a situation.
7 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
I've been to Brighton in the off-season and Smith has also done a fine job of bringing the cold and damp setting to life--and he always shows it through the eleven-year-old Mark's eyes, which keeps the character (and therefore, the readers) grounded in the story when the fantastical elements begin to be revealed.
They were one of my favorite parts of the book. I've read a lot of fiction dealing with the supernatural, or with fantastical elements, and while I appreciate the curiosity and inventiveness that writers can bring to them, what I'm most interested in, in a story such as this, is how an encounter with them affect and change ordinary people. When the world shifts underfoot, we can't see it the same way anymore, no matter how much we might want to, and Smith does a perfect job of utilizing this to tell Mark's story.
The Servants is an absolute delight of a book--not because it's so cheerful. With its subject matter, that would be a real trick to pull off. No, the delight is in how beautifully Smith handles every aspect of this poignant and mysterious story.
Highly recommended. De Lint, Charles
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
De Lint, Charles. "The Servants." The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Oct.-Nov. 2007,
p. 27+. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A168548352 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=360c95f8. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A168548352
8 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Only Forward. (SF/Fantasy/Horror)
Publishers Weekly.
248.48 (Nov. 26, 2001): p44. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2001 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH.
Subterranean
(www.subterraneanpress.com), $40 (270p) ISBN 1-931081-18-2
The dazzling pyrotechnics of British author Smith's last two future noir spectacles, Spares (under option to Dream-Works) and One of Us (under option to Warner Brothers), are prefigured in his promise-filled debut novel, a 1994 U.K. paperback original now seeing its first hardcover publication. Set in a stylized future City where individuals live in neighborhoods organically responsive to their moods and lifestyles, the story begins as a routine missing persons case for its narrator, Stark, an irreverent soft-boiled detective type who specializes in "finding people, or things." Stark's retrieval of Fell Alkland, a scientist who has fled the driven environment of Action Center for the placid Stable neighborhood, proves relatively easy. But pursuit by Action Center operatives and Alkland's crippling work-related nightmares force Stark and his quarry to escape to Jeamland, a collective repository of dreams and childhood memories that Stark appears to know very well, and to which, as he discovers only belatedly, he has been lured hack deliberately. The genius of Smith's narrative is its casual revelation that the detective scenario and detailed elaborations of the City that pull the reader into the story are clue-filled set-ups for the real story of Stark's self-discovery in Jeamland. Ultimately, this requires chapters of explanatory exposition that slow down the finale and betray the awkwardness of a new writer growing into his skills. Nevertheless, the story blazes with a visionary intensity that fires its imagery and fuels its premise that once you've gone forward, you can't go home again." (Dec.)
FYI: Last year's mass market edition of this novel won the Philip K. Dick award for distinguished science fiction published as a paperback original in the U.S.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Only Forward. (SF/Fantasy/Horror)." Publishers Weekly, 26 Nov. 2001, p. 44. Book Review
Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A80714638/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=27333a8a. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A80714638
9 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
More Tomorrow: And Other Stories
Publishers Weekly.
250.47 (Nov. 24, 2003): p46. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2003 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH. Earthling (www.earthlingpub.com), $40 (488p) ISBN 0-9744203-0-1
* In this stellar retrospective collection, Smith (Spares, etc.) proves that effective horror fiction depends as much on solid grounding in the ordinary as on the evocation of the extraordinary. Most of the 30 stories (including four original to the volume) feature characters so believably common and unassuming--"emotionally homeless, culturally pointless" is the way one describes himself--that the nightmares that overtake them hit with the unexpected force of a sucker punch. In the title story, a friendly infotech type finds his tediously clinical work on computers slowly drawing him into a voyeuristic hell of Internet pornography. "A Place to Stay" conveys the strange experience of a man's vampirization through the disorienting fragmentation of his daily routines. The protagonist of "Being Right" leads a life so seemingly humdrum that the reader is disarmed to discover it's the manifestation of a repellent psychopathology. Smith's skill at presenting emotionally credible characters gives him easy access to a wide range of themes, from "To See the Sea," a Lovecraftian tale with a flesh-creeping surprise, to "To Receive Is Better," an O. Henryesque shocker. Most of these stories have been available only in the author's native U.K., and this omnibus gathering will introduce American readers to one of the best writers of short horror fiction to emerge in the 1990s. (Dec.)
Forecast: Smith had a comprehensive story collection, What You Make It (2000), published in the U.K., but it was never reprinted in an American edition. Smith fans who haven't wanted to pay premium prices for British titles of his works will doubtless be drawn to this volume, whose contents differ significantly enough from What You Make It.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"More Tomorrow: And Other Stories." Publishers Weekly, 24 Nov. 2003, p. 46. Book Review
Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A110916973/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=3f9ef265. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A110916973
10 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
ONE OF US
Publishers Weekly.
245.26 (June 29, 1998): p37. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 1998 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Michael Marshall Smith. Bantam, $23.95 (320p) ISBN 0-553-10605-8
Dreams, memories and life as we know it are shown to be forms of virtual reality in this extravagant future noir thriller from the author of Spares. In 2017, America is a landscape of Philip K. Dick surreality that includes appliances with personalities, drugs to enhance coincidence and devices that can convert dreams into electromagnetic energy. Hap Thompson, a loner of awesome hacker skills, makes an illicit living as a "REMtemp," personally absorbing the nightmares of paying customers. When he upgrades to more lucrative-and illegal-memory disposal, he takes on more than he bargained for: the memory of a recent unsolved murder, knowledge of which could send him to prison. Hap's efforts to track down his mysterious client and pass the memory back to her are complicated by his duplicitous employer, traitorous contacts on the Internet and a dedicated cop, all engaged in an apparent conspiracy to frame him. And when enigmatic alien presences from the transferred memory invade his life, Hap senses that even his own grasp of reality is not to be trusted. Smith's ear for the nuances of classic hard- boiled narrative is surpassed only by his skill at exceeding expectations for the conventional mystery/suspense tale. The novel's logic-morphs and exponential complexities of plot culminate in a stunning revelation that ultimately ties Hap's hardware-grounded cyberculture to a metaphysical dimension. The price of this audacious development is a talky denouement that dissipates the climax's energy, but readers will still close this book reeling at the implications of their own dreams and memories. Agent, Ralph Vicinanza; film rights optioned by Warner Bros. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"ONE OF US." Publishers Weekly, 29 June 1998, p. 37. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A20886836/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=7feff238. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A20886836
11 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Spares
Publishers Weekly.
244.9 (Mar. 3, 1997): p63. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 1997 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Michael Marshall Smith. Bantam, $22.95 (352p) ISBN-00-553-10604-X
Coma meets Blade Runner in this future noir thriller, a compulsively readable melding of hardboiled narrative and hardware invention. Smith forecasts a decadent future in which the rich clone themselves at birth and callously harvest replacement organs from their "spares" as they need them. Narrator Jack Randall, a debauched but conscientious ex-cop, flees to the megalopolis of New Richmond with seven clones he has liberated from a spare farm and is almost immediately relieved of them by a gang of thugs. Jack's efforts to find out who has abducted the spares and marked them for death plunge him into a mystery that ultimately links the two events that have shattered his life: the brutal unsolved murder of his wife and child, and his soul-searing tour of military duty in The Gap. A virtual world built from the flotsam and jetsam cluttering the Internet, The Gap is an awesome conception made to seem supernaturally eerie yet scientifically feasible. Smith elaborates this creation brilliantly, as a surreal battleground where Jack confronts the demons that have haunted him for a decade, and as a symbol of emptiness and waste that brings the novel's numerous depictions of personal and social devaluation into sharp focus. Both a disconcerting portrait of a future that might be, and a poignant study of one man's fight to resist it, this novel augurs a promising future of another sort for its author. Film rights to Dreamworks SKG. (May)
FYI: This novel is an expansion of Smith's horror short story "To Receive Is Better."
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Spares." Publishers Weekly, 3 Mar. 1997, p. 63. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A19178721/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=516365b0. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A19178721
12 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
The Gist
Publishers Weekly.
260.13 (Apr. 1, 2013): p41. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2013 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text: The Gist
Michael Marshall Smith, trans, from English to French by Benoit Domis, trans, from the French by Nicholas Royle. Subterranean (subterraneanpress.com), $35 (80p) ISBN 978-159606-561-1
This ambitious collaboration attempts to get at the very roots of storytelling. Appearing first in its original English, then a French translation, and finally an English translation from the French (without access to the original English text), Smith's short story explores the ways information morphs during translation. Opening in a specialty store for "lost books," the tale follows barfly John as he struggles to translate an esoteric volume for porcine bookseller Maurice Pormoy. Although skilled in over 15 languages, John is stumped by the mysterious book, which he assumes to be written in code. Days are spent in the local bar pouring over the pages, but to no avail. Then one morning after an all-night bender, John awakens in a private, enclosed park where a man speaking a cryptic language that strikes John as somehow familiar. As John's drinking continues, so too does his descent into this enigmatic tongue. Parallels between the story's narrative and the book's overall conceit are compelling, but ultimately unfulfilling. Readers of French will enjoy the shifting stylistic nuances that any translation paired with an original inevitably provides; however, the retranslation into English adds very little to the book's overall ambition. Instead of thought-inspiring, Royle's static, dilute version reaffirms an age-old adage: something is always lost in translation. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Gist." Publishers Weekly, 1 Apr. 2013, p. 41. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A324980177/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=a63e3d46. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A324980177
13 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Spares
Thomas Gaughan
Booklist.
93.16 (Apr. 15, 1997): p1414. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 1997 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
* Smith, Michael Marshall. May 1997 352p. Bantam. $22.95 (0-553-10604-X).
Lots of bad people wish ex-cop lack Randall was dead, and someone is trying to make that wish come true. They've killed his former partner and kidnapped the only people left in the world that he cares about, and Randall will do whatever it takes to avenge his partner and save his loved ones. If Spares was simply a new novel from the Mickey-Spillane-hero-as-blunt-instrument school of hard-boiled writing would be a winner, but it's much more than that. Using elements of noir and science fiction from Robert Heinlein to William Gibson, author Smith has concocted a brew that's as unsettling, disorienting, and addictive as Rapt, Randall's drug of choice. The mean streets of this riot- and war-ravaged postapocalyptic world include an immense 200-story building/city called New Richmond and a surreal parallel universe known as the Gap. New Richmond is a metaphor for contemporary cities: height insulates the wealthy from the desperate poverty and crime below. The Gap was the site of a war as unwinnable and traumatic as Vietnam. And the wisecracking Randall is a veteran of both. Spares is far too much book for a 200-word review. Just buy it and recommend it to sci-fi and crime fans. This one is special.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Gaughan, Thomas. "Spares." Booklist, 15 Apr. 1997, p. 1414. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A19373809/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=3458c280. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A19373809
14 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
The Servants
Krista Hutley
Booklist.
103.21 (July 1, 2007): p43. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2007 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
The Servants. By Michael Marshall Smith. July 2007.224p. Earthling, $30 (0-9795054-0-2).
When 11-year-old Mark moves with his ill mother and hated stepfather to the English resort town Brighton, he discovers that their new house holds a secret. In the long unused servants' quarters, the past is alive, and the servants are still at work. At first this orderly world comforts Mark, who hates how his family has fallen apart. He sees signs, however, that the servants' world is also failing, and its disorder is finding its way into his present reality. To restore harmony to his home, Mark has to venture into the servants' quarters and fix what has broken. The realism of both present-day Brighton and its past, rich in period detail, makes the connections between them especially eerie, though it is a leap to believe that Mark, in aiding the servants, eases his mother's cancer. Mark's frustrations and selfishness are in keeping with his age, and he does some believable growing up.--Krista Hurley
YA: Recommend to fans of other magic realists, such as David Almond and Charles de Lint. KH. Hutley, Krista
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Hutley, Krista. "The Servants." Booklist, 1 July 2007, p. 43. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A166429711/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=7690b638. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A166429711
15 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Spares
Molly Gorman
Library Journal.
122.3 (Feb. 15, 1997): p164. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 1997 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Smith, Michael Marshall. Bantam. May 1997. c.352p. ISBN 0-553-10604-X. $22.95. F
Smith whisks readers into a surreal, futuristic Clockwork Orange-like world of frighteningly easy violence. In New Richmond, Virginia, former police lieutenant Jack Randall roams the dank ventilation chutes and festering Hoors of a 200-story MegaMall with "food courts the size of small towns," determined to rescue his seven buddies--make that six and one half--who are made up of spare parts. Jack, a refugee from better times with a price on his head, deals with a killer stalking him as well as bad guys from the Spares Farm who want their inmates back. The nastiness of the dismembering theme is relieved by a piquant humor and suspense that pace the reader through amazingly inventive scenes. Jack doesn't rise much above the tough-talking one- dimensional thriller hero who perseveres through all battles. But the Spares, including the six- foot-five Mr. Two, who carries a bag with a talking head, take on an endearing quality. Visually fascinating, Spares is scheduled to be a major film from Dreamworks SKG. Recommended for suspense collections.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Gorman, Molly. "Spares." Library Journal, 15 Feb. 1997, p. 164. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A19147688/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=2a4d201d. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A19147688
16 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
The Servants
Publishers Weekly.
254.21 (May 21, 2007): p39. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2007 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* The Servants MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH. Earthling (www.earthlingpub.com), $30 (224p) ISBN 978-0-9795054-0-9
At the start of Smith's superb, offbeat contemporary fantasy, 11-year-old Mark has moved to Brighton, a decaying English resort town, with his sickly mother and her new husband, David. Mark hates David, hates his parents' divorce and hates Brighton, where he has no friends and little to do. Then the old lady who lives in the tiny apartment beneath David's recently purchased townhouse takes him on a tour of the old servants' quarters. When Mark sneaks into the quarters on his own, he begins to see the long-dead servants at their jobs and realizes that something is seriously wrong. As this secret downstairs world becomes more and more disordered, Mark discovers that its problems are somehow related to his mother's advancing illness. If he can help the servants, he may just be able to save her life. IHG Award-winner Smith (Spares) portrays a child's irrational anger with devastating accuracy, and Mark's visits to the surreal and intensely symbolic world of the servants are powerfully depicted. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Servants." Publishers Weekly, 21 May 2007, p. 39. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A164327016/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=57edfc44. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A164327016
17 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Marshall, Michael: THE INTRUDERS
Kirkus Reviews.
(June 1, 2007): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2007 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Marshall, Michael THE INTRUDERS Morrow/HarperCollins (Adult FICTION) $24.95 Aug. 7, 2007 ISBN: 978-0-06-123502-3
Potent, character-driven thriller about personality manipulation and brainwashing.
Marshall (The Straw Men, 2002) ignites his exciting narrative in a clever, back-handed fashion with a gruesome double murder followed by an initially baffling flashback to the suicide of a girl named Donna. It all comes together when successful Chicago lawyer Gary Fisher calls up Jack Whalen, a former high-school acquaintance who offered some words of comfort after Donna killed herself over Gary. Why does Fisher want to see him? Because Whalen used to be with the LAPD and is now a writer living in Seattle, where that double murder took place. Its victims were the wife and son of Bill Anderson, an inventor linked to an estate Fisher's law firm is handling. Fisher convinces Whalen to investigate the case further. After all, the writer's not getting much work done while worrying about the strange behavior of his wife Amy. An advertising exec who travels frequently, she's been failing to turn up in places she's supposed to be or disappearing altogether for no discernible reason. She's also been frequenting a bogus storefront office in downtown Seattle in the company of other oddly acting characters. Meanwhile, a missing nine-year-old girl whose memory has been erased turns up at various places in Seattle, including Amy's advertising offices, displaying a new and strangely mature personality. All of these changeling personages have contact at some point with a dangerous creep who calls himself Federal Agent Shepherd. Marshall uses Fisher's and Whalen's personal histories to give some chilling psychological depth to his spooky portrait of disgruntled obsessives forming secret societies to search for "hidden truths."
Subtle, satisfying--and really scary.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Marshall, Michael: THE INTRUDERS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2007. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A169084394/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=dd3c96fe. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A169084394
18 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

19 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Everything You Need
Publishers Weekly.
260.20 (May 20, 2013): p41. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2013 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Everything You Need Michael Marshall Smith. Earthling (www.earthlingpub.com), $45 (300p) ISBN 978-09838071-4-8
This satisfying collection of 17 stories, five of which are originals, showcases Smith's knack for the uncanny. Smith (Spares; More Tomorrow & Other Stories) pulls together dark fantasy, horror, and science fiction, with each piece taking place in a world just one step away from our own--so familiar, and yet, at the same time, not quite right. Highlights include "Walking Wounded," in which a man suffers from mysterious and alarming injuries soon after a move across town; "The Seventeenth Kind," featuring a charismatic host on a home shopping network whose levelheadedness is pushed to its limits; and "The Good Listener," a melancholy near-future journey through California's Bay Area. The collection gets off to an awkward start: the settings in the first two stories don't quite gel, and "Unbelief" is more clever than it is entertaining. Once they get rolling, though, these moody stories will draw in anyone with an interest in the strange. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Everything You Need." Publishers Weekly, 20 May 2013, p. 41. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A331079767/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=1cf4ea87. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A331079767
20 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Marshall, Michael: WE ARE HERE
Kirkus Reviews.
(Jan. 1, 2014): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2014 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Marshall, Michael WE ARE HERE Mulholland Books/Little, Brown (Adult Fiction) $15.00 2, 25 ISBN: 978-0-316-25257-7
In this thriller by Marshall (Killer Move, 2011, etc.), people are being stalked on the streets of New York but not in the usual fashion. The stalkers are part of a strange underworld of rejected "shadow people" who disappear as suddenly as they appear. First-person narrator John Henderson, a former lawyer now working in a restaurant, discovers that the shadow people are not easy to tail. He has been asked to determine who is stalking his girlfriend Kristina's friend Catherine. In a parallel plot, told in the third person, small-town teacher David is bumped by a stranger in Penn Station and insinuatingly told, "Remember me." David, who has come to New York with his wife, Dawn, for meetings about the publication of his first book, can't shake the stranger or the strange feeling that he knows him. Soon enough, David becomes embroiled with members of the underworld, who are named for their designated roles: Cornerman, Fingerman, etc. Kristina is followed, traumatic events from John's past are alluded to, and a significant pregnancy points to the future. Is this book a ghost story? A Stephen King-style shocker? An allegory about the neglected underclass? Marshall takes so long to reveal the most basic details, and his writing can be so obtuse, readers may lose interest by the time they find their footing. But in the final third, Marshall puts the pieces together to unsettling effect. It helps that John and Kristina, who share an East Village apartment, are such a winning duo. Though laborious at times, Marshall's novel rewards the reader's patience with its edgy storytelling and ambition.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Marshall, Michael: WE ARE HERE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Jan. 2014. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A354178488/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=1a1ce27b. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A354178488
21 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Marshall, Michael: KILLER MOVE
Kirkus Reviews.
(May 1, 2011): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2011 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Marshall, Michael KILLER MOVE Morrow/HarperCollins (Adult Fiction) $24.99 6, 28 ISBN: 978-0-06-143442-6
A Florida realtor targeted by unknown antagonists is suspected of assorted crimes while a parolee returns to his old stomping grounds to avenge the death of the woman he was convicted of murdering.
Bill Moore makes a good living selling units for a condo chain in the Keys off the coast of Sarasota, Fla., and he's happily married to a magazine editor, Stephanie. But he wants to become super-rich. While pursuing the big deal that will enable him to start his own business, he starts receiving mysterious messages and getting packages he didn't order, all tagged with the word "Modified." When his wife walks out on him after discovering convincingly faked photos of him in a tryst with a co-worker, he becomes an odd man out desperate to prove his innocence. Meanwhile, the convict, John Hunter, is carrying out a cold-blooded plan that involves abducting the man whose $8 million house Bill is hoping to make a killing on. When people around him start dying, Bill begins questioning everyone: Is it possible his wife has set him up for a fall? A solid, workmanlike writer, Marshall (The Intruders, 2007, etc.) evokes the Florida setting quite well. Atmosphere is his strong suit. But much of novel seems forced and secondhand. Moore is not particularly likable, and Hunter is one of the less memorable killers in recent crime fiction.
A mildly enjoyable thriller that sets up a sequel on which only committed fans of the author may want to take a flyer.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Marshall, Michael: KILLER MOVE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2011. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A256559520/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=c0964dc4. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A256559520
22 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Marshall, Michael. The Intruders
Lisa O'Hara
Library Journal.
132.12 (July 1, 2007): p81. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2007 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Marshall, Michael. The Intruders. Morrow. Aug. 2007. c.400p. ISBN 978-0-06-1235023. $24.95. F
Making his hardcover U.S. debut, British thriller writer Marshall (The Straw Men) introduces readers to Jack Whalen, a former LAPD officer who wrote a book about crime scenes in Los Angeles. He and wife, Amy, now live in Washington State, where he's attempting to write another book while she pursues a successful career as an ad agency executive. Jack's feeling that something is not right in his marriage is confirmed when he tries to contact Amy at her hotel during a business trip and there is no sign that his wife has ever checked in. The same day, he gets a visit from an old high school friend who asks him to investigate a home invasion and murder in Seattle. As Jack struggles to discover the truth about his wife, he is drawn into something far larger and more mysterious than he could ever have imagined. Readers will find it very hard to put down this well-written and somewhat spooky novel. Strongly recommended for all fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 4/15/07; Marshall also writes sf and horror under the name Michael Marshall Smith; out this month is The Servants from Earthling Publications.-- Ed.]--Lisa O'Hara, Univ. of Manitoba Libs., Winnepeg
O'Hara, Lisa
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
O'Hara, Lisa. "Marshall, Michael. The Intruders." Library Journal, 1 July 2007, p. 81.
Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A166536879 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=0309802e. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A166536879
23 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Only Forward
Jackie Cassada
Library Journal.
125.12 (July 2000): p147. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Smith, Michael Marshall. Only Forward. Spectra: Bantam. Sept. 2000. c.384p. ISBN 0-553-57970-3. pap. $6.50. SF
When a senior member of Action Center disappears, the authorities hire Stark to find him. Stark succeeds in his mission--and then the trouble begins. The author of Spares sets his latest sf action thriller in a color-coded near future, where independent neighborhoods vie for dominance in a dangerous and deadly high-tech world. Smith combines a whirlwind plot with a genially laconic hero to produce a fast-paced tale that belongs in large sf collections.
Jackie Cassada Asheville-Buncombe Lib. Syst., NC
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Cassada, Jackie. "Only Forward." Library Journal, July 2000, p. 147. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A63818981/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=9e1bd3da. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A63818981
24 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
The Intruders
Michael Marshall
Bookmarks.
(November-December 2007): p57. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2007 Bookmarks Publishing LLC http://www.bookmarksmagazine.com/
Full Text:
EXCELLENT
Genre-bending murder mystery
When Seattle resident Bill Anderson's wife and son are found brutally murdered and Bill is nowhere to be found, attorney Gary Fisher approaches an old high school chum, former LAPD cop Jack Whalen. Fisher tells a wild story about a rich man who disinherited his family and left his fortune to strangers--one of whom was Bill. Jack, however, is preoccupied: his beloved wife Amy vanished during a business trip to Seattle. She finally reappears as if nothing has happened, but something is terribly wrong--and Jack is determined to find out what it is. A strange young girl kidnapped from a beach in Oregon may hold the key to this sequence of increasingly bizarre events.
William Morrow. 392 pages. $24.95. ISBN: 0061235024 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
USA Today
CLASSIC
"The Intruders is another novel that defies classification as it mixes supernatural activity, science fiction and a murder mystery. ... In addition to its intriguing characters, including ex-cop-turned- author Jack Whalen and Rachel, a mesmerizing 10-year-old girl, readers are rewarded with a well-constructed, terrifying story line that makes many other novels, of any genre, feel like Novel Writing 101." CAROL MEMMOT
New Orleans Times-Picayune EXCELLENT
25 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
"[Marshall] is a master of the thriller laced with the supernatural, writing with the rocketing pace of the conspiracy unveiled. His most recent novel displays his great strengths as a writer: a compelling plot, characters who are completely believable and unforgettable, and sharp, smart insights into the nature of modern life." SUSAN LARSON
New York Daily News EXCELLENT
"What starts out as a more or less standard man-seeks-missingwife tale trips over to the other side, dovetailing two genres so neatly as to earn M. Night Shyamalan's respect." SHERRYL CONELLY
New York Times EXCELLENT
"Although there is nothing showy or even stylish about his prose, Mr. Marshall (whose other credits include The Straw Men) tells a nerve-racking story full of bizarre twists. ... It's not necessary to believe this book's spooky underlying premise to be caught up in the campfire-tale power of its action." JANET MASLIN
South FL Sun-Sentinel EXCELLENT
"When the denouement comes, the resolution will have readers looking over their shoulders, feeling a bit paranoid themselves, as Marshall drives it home with a brilliant ending. ... But as engrossing as the plot becomes, The Intruders is too long by about 80 pages." OLINE H. COGDILL
Baltimore Sun GOOD
26 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
"When Marshall finally pulls back the veil and reveals the underlying foundation of The Intruders, I didn't know whether to be impressed or put off. I was, however, taken out of what had been an outstanding story to date, and the final quarter doesn't come close to matching the novel's protracted scary brilliance." SARAH WEINMAN
Tampa Tribune FAIR
"This may not be appreciated by readers of the privateinvestigator genre who expect a certain sense of realism in their stories. This particular tale is unnecessarily complex, and the story gets both muddled and lost in the multiple viewpoints and details." LARRY GANDLE
CRITICAL SUMMARY
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-themill 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 genredefying novel.
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
The Straw Men (2002): A man investigating the accident that claimed the lives of both his parents finds that their deaths may be linked to a twisted serial killer and a bizarre cult called the Straw Men. Stephen King called this debut novel "brilliantly written and scary as hell."
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Marshall, Michael
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Marshall, Michael. "The Intruders." Bookmarks, Nov.-Dec. 2007, p. 57. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A170159599/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=f96ec8e4. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
27 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Gale Document Number: GALE|A170159599
28 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
The Straw Men. (Mass Market)
Publishers Weekly.
249.28 (July 15, 2002): p61. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2002 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
MICHAEL MARSHALL. Jove, $6.99 (400p) ISBN 0-515-13427-9
Marshall's debut thriller, which is essentially two seemingly independent stories that meet in the middle, takes its time hooking readers. But once the complex and disparate plot lines meld, this expansive work demands the reader's attention. In Dyersburg, Mont., narrator Ward Hopkins, attempting to make sense of the accident that killed his parents, discovers a note and videotape that lead him to believe their lives (and deaths) were not as they appeared. Meanwhile, the abduction of 14-year-old Sarah Becker renews the search for a serial killer who scalps his victims, embroiders their names into sweaters using their hair and then delivers the clothing to the victims' parents. As Ward and his CIA buddy slowly unravel the mystery surrounding Ward's parents, FBI agent Nina Baynam and former LAPD homicide detective John Zandt search for the elusive killer. Their paths cross when a series of connections is made between the victims and a bizarre cult known as The Straw Men. Marshall's book is filled with pages of uninterrupted description, which, while compelling, doesn't make for fast reading. But, to borrow a cliche, the devil is in the details. That's certainly the case with this novel, whose graphic scenes of child abuse and dismemberment depict humankind at its most evil. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Straw Men. (Mass Market)." Publishers Weekly, 15 July 2002, p. 61. Book Review Index
Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A89831378/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=8e2741cf. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A89831378
29 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
We Are Here
Don Crinklaw
Booklist.
110.9-10 (Jan. 1, 2014): p53+. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2014 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
We Are Here. By Michael Marshall. Feb. 2014. 432p. Little, Brown/Mulholland, $15 (9780316252577); e-book, $9.99 (9780316252560).
For the first half of this novel, readers will believe they're in a tingly thriller. Right off, we meet David as he stands on a train platform. A stranger calls him by name. Just before vanishing, the mystery man whispers, "Remember me." Jump-cut to John, a New Yorker whose experience in intelligence work is called upon when a friend of a friend asks for help. She's sure someone is following her, but when she looks back, no one's there. Some fine scenes, suspenseful and witty, ensue as John and his girlfriend mount their own surveillance. They walk fast, maintaining cell- phone contact, and notice that, yes, someone is tracking their friend of a friend. Odd, though: whoever it is can disappear as quickly as that person on the platform. Here's where the thriller dead-ends, and the fantasy begins. Or maybe it's magic realism. Suddenly there's a new mystery to solve. When the dreamer forgets the dream, does it live on anyway? Readers comfortable with mixing genres will enjoy the ride, while others may want to get off at the first stop.--Don Crinklaw
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Crinklaw, Don. "We Are Here." Booklist, 1 Jan. 2014, p. 53+. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A357147571/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=3fce9e53. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A357147571
30 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Bad Things
Publishers Weekly.
256.13 (Mar. 30, 2009): p27+. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2009 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Bad Things
Michael Marshall. Morrow, $24.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-06-143440-2
At the start of this unsettling novel of supernatural suspense from bestseller Marshall (The Intruders), four-year-old Scott Henderson dies from no apparent cause after falling into a lake in Black Ridge, Wash. The boy's devastated parents, John and Carol, divorce, and both leave the area. Three years later, John is lured back to Black Ridge by a chilling message from a woman who says she knows what killed his son--a siren call that John can't ignore. John's return is a trigger for other ominous events that will lead him to relive Scott's death and confront the dissolution of his former life. The small town's surface normality contrasts nicely with the unnerving behavior of some residents and even inanimate objects (e.g., cars that suddenly won't start). While much of what's going on doesn't make a lot of sense, this spooky tale shows Marshall (who writes horror and SF as Michael Marshall Smith) has a knack not only for the frisson of dread but also the telling psychological insight. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Bad Things." Publishers Weekly, 30 Mar. 2009, p. 27+. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A200341768/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=3a6e608d. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A200341768
31 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
The Intruders
Publishers Weekly.
254.23 (June 4, 2007): p28. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2007 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* The Intruders MICHAEL MARSHALL. Morrow, $24.95 (400p) ISBN 978-0-06-123502-3
Bestseller Marshall (The Straw Men) outdoes his own high standards with this potent blend of suspense, paranoia and just plain creepiness. Jack Whalen, a former L.A. cop, is pursuing a new career as a writer in an idyllic small town just east of Seattle when weird things start to undermine his pursuit of the American dream. First, an old acquaintance from Jack's childhood suddenly turns up with a strange tale about a double homicide; then Jack's wife, an advertising executive, disappears briefly on a business trip. Is he going crazy, or is she leading some sort of secret life? And what about these disturbing spells he keeps having, these fleeting sensations of otherness, in which his own existence is unfamiliar to him? Meanwhile, down the coast in Portland, a nine-year-old girl having similar visions has gone missing. As Jack investigates, he stumbles onto a secret much darker than he ever could have anticipated. Marshall ingeniously threads these strands together into a provocative and supremely intelligent thriller that reads like a cross between Andrew Klavan and Philip K. Dick. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Intruders." Publishers Weekly, 4 June 2007, p. 28. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A164829759/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=6671cc32. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A164829759
32 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Killer Move
Joanne Wilkinson
Booklist.
107.17 (May 1, 2011): p32. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2011 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Killer Move.
By Michael Marshall.
June 2011. 368p. Morrow, $24.99 (9780061434426).
Florida real-estate salesman Bill Moore is obsessed with living the good life. Although he makes good money, has a beautiful home, and is happily married, he's always trying to suss out the next big deal, hoping to be accepted into the elite circle of Sarasota's movers and shakers. That's why he's more than a little annoyed when he finds out someone is hacking into his e-mail account, sending inappropriate jokes to his clients, and ordering pornography under his name. He's even more puzzled when he receives a series of cards with a one-word message, "Modified." Meanwhile, John Hunter has long known that someone is seriously messing with his life. When he gets out of prison after serving 16 years for a murder he didn't commit, he has only one thing on his mind, vengeance. As Moore's and Hunter's paths converge, serious mayhem ensues. Marshall ratchets up the stakes of his deftly written suspense novel by injecting telling if somewhat paranoid commentary on how regular people can be manipulated by those with the means and ways.
Wilkinson, Joanne
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Wilkinson, Joanne. "Killer Move." Booklist, 1 May 2011, p. 32. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A256684003/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=7b1a2734. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A256684003
33 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Bad Things
Michele Leber
Booklist.
105.18 (May 15, 2009): p21. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2009 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Bad Things.
By Michael Marshall.
May 2009. 352p. Morrow, $24.99 (9780061434402).
Bad things happen in the town of Black Ridge, Washington. For John Henderson, it started several years earlier with the mysterious death of his four-year-old son, Scott, which led to the dissolution of his marriage and the general downsizing of his life. Now working as a waiter in an Oregon beach town, he receives a mysterious e-mail from a woman in Black Ridge offering information about Scott's death. As Henderson tries pin down his elusive informant, he is also helping his employer's daughter, whose spaced-out boyfriend's drug dealings have him in a world of trouble. Gradually Henderson understands the effect his past actions had on events and the reason his ex-wife and younger son also are drawn back to Black Ridge. Marshall (The Intruders, 2008) builds up suspense slowly, moving between major characters in a scattershot fashion and leaving a certain ambiguity about the evil and its source. One thing, though, is very clear: Black Ridge--like the Maine towns populated by Stephen King's characters--is not a place you'd want to visit.--Michele Leber
Leber, Michele
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Leber, Michele. "Bad Things." Booklist, 15 May 2009, p. 21. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A200915953/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=ce6928b2. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A200915953
34 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
We Are Here
Publishers Weekly.
260.50 (Dec. 9, 2013): p48. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2013 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
We Are Here
Michael Marshall. Little, Brown/Mulholland, $15 trade paper (432p) ISBN 978-0-316-25257-7
Marshall combines mystery with urban fantasy to create an eerie, convoluted tale of shadow beings living between the cracks of our world. While visiting New York City, writer David Miller encounters a stranger who says cryptically, "Remember me." Meanwhile, John Henderson (protagonist of 2009's Bad Things) and his girlfriend, Kristina, investigate her friend's stalker, who they discover belongs to a society of mysterious entities. These people, who call themselves "friends," might be ghosts or forgotten imaginary friends whose creators have grown to adulthood. They have their own factions and agendas, some of which threaten John, Kristina, David, and those David loves. While allusions to John's past can be distracting, and some explanations are delayed so long that readers might be tempted to flip ahead for context, Marshall depicts interactions involving John and Kristina with realism and warmth. He excels at endowing the ephemeral "friends" with complex motives and emotions, making them as engaging as his most finely drawn flesh-and-blood characters. (Feb.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"We Are Here." Publishers Weekly, 9 Dec. 2013, p. 48. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A354182770/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=745c7977. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A354182770
35 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Killer Move
Publishers Weekly.
258.12 (Mar. 21, 2011): p52. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2011 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Killer Move
Michael Marshall. Morrow, $24.99 (368p) ISBN 978-0-06-143442-6
Marshall, author of the Straw Men trilogy (The Straw Men, The Upright Man, and Blood of Angels), offers a subtle and unnerving story of the little things that can tip the balance of one's life and send it spiraling into chaos. Everything is going well for Bill Moore, a successful, ambitious, happily married realtor in Sarasota, Fla., until the day he finds a card on his desk with a single word on the front: modified printed in white letters and bold type against a black background. In a sort of malicious, Kafkaesque "butterfly effect," a reservation Moore didn't make, a book he didn't order, and an e-mail he didn't send lead to increasing trouble. Meanwhile, a convicted murderer released on parole, John Hunter, sets out on a course of deadly vengeance. Marshall skillfully spins interlocking plot lines as the agents out to ruin Moore and Hunter begin to collide in nightmarish fashion. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Killer Move." Publishers Weekly, 21 Mar. 2011, p. 52. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A252447520/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=602f3636. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A252447520
36 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Marshall, Michael. We Are Here
Vicki Briner
Xpress Reviews.
(Jan. 24, 2014): From Book Review Index Plus.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Briner, Vicki. "Marshall, Michael. We Are Here." Xpress Reviews, 24 Jan. 2014. Book Review
Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A361186185/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=89f51475. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A361186185
37 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Marshall, Michael. Bad Things
Lisa O'Hara
Xpress Reviews.
(May 22, 2009): From Book Review Index Plus.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
O'Hara, Lisa. "Marshall, Michael. Bad Things." Xpress Reviews, 22 May 2009. Book
Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A201441714/GPS?u=schlager& sid=GPS&xid=e6b52222. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A201441714
38 of 38 8/12/18, 2:23 PM

Keep, Alan. "The Anomaly." Booklist, 15 May 2018, p. 33. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A541400846/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=7055c749. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. "The Anomaly." Publishers Weekly, 23 Apr. 2018, p. 65. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A536532886/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=3aec579c. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. "Rutger, Michael: THE ANOMALY." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2018. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A534375200/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=d10de860. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. Suite, Cynde. "Rutger, Michael.: The Anomaly." Xpress Reviews, 29 June 2018. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A546502460/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=12f48db2. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. Schroeder, Regina. "Smith, Michael Marshall. More Tomorrow and Other Stories." Booklist, 15 Nov. 2003, p. 589. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A111465667/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=706e20ef. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. Cassada, Jackie. "Smith, Michael Marshall. More Tomorrow & Other Stories." Library Journal, 15 Feb. 2004, p. 167. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A113897065/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=88cfee63. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. De Lint, Charles. "The Servants." The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Oct.-Nov. 2007, p. 27+. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A168548352/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=360c95f8. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. "Only Forward. (SF/Fantasy/Horror)." Publishers Weekly, 26 Nov. 2001, p. 44. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A80714638/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=27333a8a. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. "More Tomorrow: And Other Stories." Publishers Weekly, 24 Nov. 2003, p. 46. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A110916973/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=3f9ef265. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. "ONE OF US." Publishers Weekly, 29 June 1998, p. 37. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A20886836/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=7feff238. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. "Spares." Publishers Weekly, 3 Mar. 1997, p. 63. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A19178721/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=516365b0. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. "The Gist." Publishers Weekly, 1 Apr. 2013, p. 41. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A324980177/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=a63e3d46. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. Gaughan, Thomas. "Spares." Booklist, 15 Apr. 1997, p. 1414. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A19373809/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=3458c280. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. Hutley, Krista. "The Servants." Booklist, 1 July 2007, p. 43. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A166429711/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=7690b638. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. Gorman, Molly. "Spares." Library Journal, 15 Feb. 1997, p. 164. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A19147688/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=2a4d201d. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. "The Servants." Publishers Weekly, 21 May 2007, p. 39. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A164327016/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=57edfc44. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. "Marshall, Michael: THE INTRUDERS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2007. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A169084394/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=dd3c96fe. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. "Everything You Need." Publishers Weekly, 20 May 2013, p. 41. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A331079767/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=1cf4ea87. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. "Marshall, Michael: WE ARE HERE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Jan. 2014. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A354178488/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=1a1ce27b. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. "Marshall, Michael: KILLER MOVE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2011. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A256559520/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=c0964dc4. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. O'Hara, Lisa. "Marshall, Michael. The Intruders." Library Journal, 1 July 2007, p. 81. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A166536879/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=0309802e. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. Cassada, Jackie. "Only Forward." Library Journal, July 2000, p. 147. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A63818981/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=9e1bd3da. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. Marshall, Michael. "The Intruders." Bookmarks, Nov.-Dec. 2007, p. 57. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A170159599/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=f96ec8e4. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. "The Straw Men. (Mass Market)." Publishers Weekly, 15 July 2002, p. 61. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A89831378/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=8e2741cf. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. Crinklaw, Don. "We Are Here." Booklist, 1 Jan. 2014, p. 53+. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A357147571/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=3fce9e53. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. "Bad Things." Publishers Weekly, 30 Mar. 2009, p. 27+. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A200341768/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=3a6e608d. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. "The Intruders." Publishers Weekly, 4 June 2007, p. 28. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A164829759/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=6671cc32. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. Wilkinson, Joanne. "Killer Move." Booklist, 1 May 2011, p. 32. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A256684003/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=7b1a2734. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. Leber, Michele. "Bad Things." Booklist, 15 May 2009, p. 21. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A200915953/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=ce6928b2. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. "We Are Here." Publishers Weekly, 9 Dec. 2013, p. 48. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A354182770/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=745c7977. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. "Killer Move." Publishers Weekly, 21 Mar. 2011, p. 52. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A252447520/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=602f3636. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. Briner, Vicki. "Marshall, Michael. We Are Here." Xpress Reviews, 24 Jan. 2014. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A361186185/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=89f51475. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018. O'Hara, Lisa. "Marshall, Michael. Bad Things." Xpress Reviews, 22 May 2009. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A201441714/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=e6b52222. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.

• SF Reviews
  http://www.sfreviews.net/onlyforward.html
  Word count: 613

  MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH

  Michael Marshall Smith became one of British SF's biggest "names to watch" in the 90's; occasionally he drops the "Smith" from his name for mainstream horror thrillers like The Straw Men. Only Forward, his debut (which didn't hit these shores until 2000), is a highly energetic piece of writing that makes a bizarre attempt to cross the sensibilities of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling with those of Douglas Adams and Terry Gilliam. It's Blade Runner done up as a peculiar farce, and only some of the time do you feel like you're in on the joke. There's no denying the book is very readable and entertaining, and often quite funny; the problem is in determining whether or not this was the appropriate approach to the material for Smith to have taken. There are many scenes that are very dark and suspenseful, and the whole book has that gritty edge to it that dystopian fiction is known for. Frequently, this clashes with the book's often cartoonish characters and scenes in which our hero argues with sarcastic household appliances. But overall, Only Forward is the work of a fertile imagination running wild, and we need more of that in these days when SF is becoming more and more formula-bound.

  The novel's future is one of those so outré it could only exist in a story such as this one. There are no more countries or even cities; the human race has developed self-governing Neighborhoods with distinct rules and boundaries, many of which are outlandish. There's a Neighborhood just for fat people, one for computer geeks, and one where no noise at all is allowed; the one where our hero lives, called Color, has buildings and sidewalks that change color to match your outfit as you walk down the street! I can tell you right now that if you're not able to suspend your disbelief for something this crazy, you're not going to warm to this book. But Smith's brisk sense of humor, though it may take a chapter or two to acclimate to, helps you along.

  Our hero, named Stark, is an investigator specializing in missing persons. Stark is hired by a friend from the Neighborhood of Action Center—comprised entirely of office buildings where busy bureaucrats called Actioneers work for places with names like the Department of Doing Things Really Quickly—to find a missing colleague named Alkland. Kidnapping is suspected, but who would have the resources to abduct an Actioneer?

  Stark traces Alkland to the Neighborhood of Stable, which has sealed itself off from the outside world so completely that most of its populace are unaware there even is one. Risking the mandatory death sentence that sneaking in to Stable usually brings, Stark locates Alkland, and when he learns the real story behind the Actioneer's disappearance, he and Alkland find themselves on the run for their lives.

  I couldn't be more impressed with Smith's inventiveness. This book consistently keeps you guessing what's coming next, and there are more than a few swell surprises to trip you up just when you think it's safe to grow complacent. Is Smith in control of his creation at all times? I don't think so; as I mentioned, some scenes, characters, and concepts go right over the top into the realm of the absurd. But it's pretty clear that any excesses are the result not of talent failing ambition, but instead of trying its damnedest to rise to it. The career of Michael Marshall Smith, both in and out of SF, is one worth following, and this is a fine place to get started.

• Curled Up
  http://www.curledup.com/servamms.htm
  Word count: 837

  Buy *The Servants* by Michael Marshall Smith online

  The Servants
  Michael Marshall Smith
  Eos
  Paperback
  224 pages
  September 2008
  rated 4 of 5 possible stars

  buy this book now or browse millions of other great products at amazon.com
  previous reviewnext review

  A swirling, ghostly coming-of-age story, The Servants is told from the point of view of eleven-year-old Mark, who would never have thought to find himself living in Brighton with his remote stepfather, David, and his delicate and sickly mother. Within weeks of David coming into their lives, Mark’s mother started to get ill. From the outset, it became pretty obvious that there was something terribly wrong - all she could do was sit at home all day and stare silently out the living room window at the vast Brighton seascape.

  David offhandedly informs Gerald that, from the start, his mother needs rest and quiet, and for the time being she can’t even consider stepping outside the front door to go for a walk or have dinner in one of the many restaurants that pepper the boardwalk. Mark’s relationship with his stepfather has been difficult at best. He misses his natural father and his cosmopolitan life back up in London. His only real comfort is his skateboard, a recent present from his father, which he plays with along the great stretches of the asphalt promenade by the beach.

  Mark spends most of his afternoons virtually friendless with no one to talk to about his dreams and his disappointments, watching the other boys joke and toss each other around. All the while he skates in silence, going home to the three-story house on Brunswick Square that belongs to David but doesn’t feel anything like home

  A fall through his bedroom window jumpstarts a series of events that force Mark to question his life as he sees it and what is real and what is not. In the corridor below, where an old lady lives crammed into a tiny flat, David that meets a collection of ghostly servants. They seem to have appeared from another time and another place when the house was full of life and activity. A symbolic gatekeeper to the darker secret of these long-dead servants, the old lady quietly falls asleep and David is able to steal the key and inhabit the gloomy recesses of the creaking house where the hallways and shelves might be empty but are thick with the dust and cobwebs of a generation ago.

  Perhaps Mark is dreaming that he had fallen asleep in the old lady’s chair then dreamed he’d woken, stolen the key from the drawer and gone to the back of the house. But surely dreams “do not leave dust on your hands or smudges on the shoulders of your jacket.” After a few more trips behind the large, creaky door, the servants become evermore real, and Mark becomes trapped in the noisy chaos of the gathering storm, both he and the servants thrown away from each other by the cyclone of ash and blackness and fear.

  As the swirl of smoke and ash starts to revolve faster, author Michael Marshall Smith swirls a unique and bittersweet tale out of the cinders of Mark’s lonely existence. Gradually realizing the enormity of his position, the servants' plight to clean their rooms and their desire to include Mark in the process provide the story’s central metaphor as Marks learns some tough lessons in how to battle his own life so far. Mark begins to move through parallel worlds, questioning his own mundane existence and the strange life of the servants who seem to be trapped between past and present, between fantasy and truth.

  As the cold, sleet, and icy winds buffet Brighton beach, Mark finally grasps the essential meaning behind his journey into the world of the servants. He’s taken too many things for granted for too long a while. Times of course change, and things do not remain the same; real life does not go on forever, just like London did. The reality is far more like Brighton: “Things change and things stop, and things eventually fall away into the sea."

  A compelling tale that centers on the moral dilemmas of one young boy trapped like a fragile bird in a cage with no apparent way out, the novel is always measured and controlled even as the story reeks of spectral events, the servants crying out for help from Mark. In the end, Mark’s journey is about traveling toward the paths of understanding of the world, and of the bittersweet walkways of life as he finds ways to help the servants while attempting to forge a new kind of peace with his mother, and with David.

  Originally published on Curled Up With A Good Book at www.curledup.com. © Michael Leonard, 2008

• SF site
  https://www.sfsite.com/02b/spar27.htm
  Word count: 557

  A review by Rodger Turner

  Advertisement
  Former cop and soldier Jack Randall has bottomed out. Five years earlier his wife and daugther were slaughtered. He's addicted to Rapt and he's plagued by nightmares of his days of military service in The Gap, a pseudo-real space created by computers where reality is only relative. Now Jack works at the only job still available to him: as a guard at a SPARES farm where bodies are raised to allow for dedicated replacement organs. But things get worse. Jack is on the run with six inmates (well, five and a half). His pursuers want those bodies back; one of them belongs to the daughter of a powerful city boss. In his flight, he bumps into some associates of a crime lord whom he believes killed his family, his best friend -- a cop -- is savagely murdered while working on tracking a serial murderer and Jack's running out of cash. All Jack wants to do is to buy a truck and flee with the farm inmates in order to settle down in Florida. Whaddya think; does he go?

  Michael Marshall Smith has a remarkable eye. His writing is starkly visual reminding me of what Blade Runner would be like on speed. He captures the essence of characters with a deft touch, all the while pushing the plot forward with surreal intensity. His characters' emotional entanglements are all too human; nobody wears just a black or just a white hat. They're just trying to survive a bleak future where artifice and distraction seem to be the order of the day. Their society is quite caste-ridden but one can rise and fall within the middle band. I found it all too real; it seems to be where North American society is heading. It scared the pants off me. For there doesn't seem to be any real cohesion. Everyone just moves along with the masses whose capacity to consume is boundless.

  I'd heard good buzz about Smith's writing. When a friend went to the UK, one of the books I asked him to find for me was Smith's first, Only Forward. It was breathtaking. I was hooked on Smith's writing. The buzz for Spares was even better. They were right. How can anyone not read a novel that contains the following:

  Time to get out of town before I slept with God's wife.

  or not laugh aloud after reading:

  She was lying spreadeagled on the snow and muttering like a starfish which had woken up much earlier than it wanted.

  Michael Marshall Smith is the newest member of my Writer A-List.

  Copyright © 1998 by Rodger Turner

  Rodger has read a lot of science fiction and fantasy in forty years. He can only shake his head and say, "So many books, so little time." More of his opinions are available on our Book Reviews pages.

  Spares
  Michael Marshall Smith
  Michael Marshall Smith was born in Cheshire. After spending time in the US, South Africa and Australia, he now lives in London. His first novel, Only Forward, won the BFA in 1995. Spares has been optioned by DreamWorks SKG.

  Michael Marshall Smith Website
  ISFDB Bibliography
  Past Feature Reviews

• Spike Magazine
  https://www.spikemagazine.com/1199oneofus.php
  Word count: 731

  Michael Marshall Smith: One Of Us

  Antony Johnston

  One of Us. A powerful phrase — belonging, kinship, camaraderie. Familiar concepts, though this book deals with them in ways you may not expect.

  Initially our protagonist, Hap Thompson, seems anything but One of Us. An outsider, a loner with no life, an ex-wife, forced to live in exile from his hometown. The reader begins to think that perhaps Smith means Us in the more intimate, author-reader sense. Everyone can identify with the character who feels his life has been wasted, his best years are behind him and he will never again live as fully as he once did.

  Hap is a REMTemp, an occupation whose legalities are still being wrangled out in court. He receives other people’s dreams, so that they may sleep untroubled. The process leaves him tired but wealthy, though the grey legal aspect means he must move from town to town, trusting no-one. Nevertheless, Hap has little reason to complain. He knows he screwed his own life up, and this is the best-paying job he’s ever had. Mustn’t grumble.

  Until, that is, his boss ‘persuades’ him to move into another, even more dubious area — memory receival. And one particular memory contains a murder, committed by a woman who has now disappeared. The murder of a police lieutenant.

  The book starts, like all good thrillers, in the middle. It is only through lengthy but natural exposition that we realise what has befallen Hap, about a quarter of the way through the book. Though by that time, after having discovered he is also being pursued by what can best be described as Men In Black for reasons unknown, we are so snowed under with questions, concepts and plot twists that we have far more on our plate to worry about.

  Spares, Smith’s previous novel, was a similar ‘one man’s quest to find the truth’ affair, but to compare further would be unfair. What we have here is an altogether more mature work, with less desire to shock and more emphasis on keeping the reader turning the pages, which Smith does admirably. His previously shown talent for a good plot and deft character is shown to full potential here in a story that contains more twists than any given John Grisham novel has in its little finger. Metaphorically speaking.

  One Of Us

  Characters are equally well-handled. Hap is an eminently sympathetic man who we cannot help but feel for. Many of his internal dialogues and emotional outbursts will bring on sage nods and murmurs of, ‘Yep. Know that feeling.’ The supporting characters are crafted with similar skill, never crossing the line from archetype to stereotype. Not even the Amoral Head of an Evil Corp.

  So who is this for? In an effort to help Smith’s work reach the audience it deserves, One of Us is very carefully described as a thriller, with barely any mention of the speculative elements. Even the jacket design is deliberately modern without appearing too ‘niche’. For once, though, this isn’t unfair — speculative technology is there to benefit the plot, not vice-versa. And to reach the (literal) revelation of the Men In Black’s real identity, such a massive and entirely different suspension of disbelief is necessary that the science fiction becomes almost ancillary. Yet another young British writer appears to have found a love for simply telling a cracking story instead of trying too hard to be clever. No bad thing.

  Will it work? It appears to have already done so — Smith has moved beyond the hard-core neo-cyberpunk audience he initially attracted, and is now seen as a mainstream writer. It’s very hard to pin down exactly who will like this book besides a glib, ‘Anyone who likes a good thriller,’ though that’s as much as I’ll commit to. Fans, if they can live with the shift of emphasis from speculation, will enjoy One of Us for Smith’s impressive skills of character and plot twisting. Newcomers will simply enjoy it for what it is — a cracking read.

  And the ‘Us’ in question? It’s not who you think. I promise you that.

  November 1, 1999 Filed Under: Book Reviews, Novels, Technology

• Alternative Magazine Online
  https://alternativemagazineonline.co.uk/2017/07/25/book-review-hannah-green-and-her-unfeasibly-mundane-existence-by-michael-marshall-smith/
  Word count: 833

  BOOK REVIEW – Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence by Michael Marshall Smith

  By Marty Mulrooney

  Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence by Michael Marshall Smith

  Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence is the new novel by award-winning writer Michael Marshall Smith (The Straw Men, We Are Here). It tells the story of Hannah Green, who has decided that her very existence is unfeasibly mundane. That is, until she discovers her grandfather has been friends with the Devil for nearly two hundred and fifty years…

  Humans and stories need each other. We tell them, but they tell us too – reaching with soft hands and warm arms to pull us into their embrace. They do this especially when we have become mired in lives of which we can make no sense. We all need a path, and stories can sometimes usher us back to it.
  That’s what happened to Hannah Green. She got caught up in a story.
  And this is what it is.

  Narrated in a warm, bedtime story manner, Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence – an absolutely lovely mouthful of a title – does a wonderful job combining the ordinary with the extraordinary. At its centre is Hannah, an eleven-year-old girl that lives in Santa Cruz, on the coast of Northern California. Her life has become a repetitious, never-ending cycle of school, homework, food, bed. What’s more, her mom and dad have stopped living together for reasons she doesn’t fully understand.

  Meanwhile, the Devil wakes up after an extremely long nap to find himself on the terrace of the Palace Hotel on Miami’s South Beach. After dealing with an irritated waiter – who sadly falls to his death soon after – the Devil sets off to find Hannah’s grandfather, who is much older than he looks. After all, he is the Engineer. He built the Sacrifice Machine, a mechanical device designed to take evil energy from the world and send it directly to hell. Only now, the machine isn’t working…

  ‘Bloody pelicans,’ muttered a voice. ‘Useless for riding on. Bony, flappy bastards.’
  The Devil waited while Vaneclaw got himself to his feet and came to stand in front of him.
  ‘Well?’
  ‘Hello, boss. Had a good day?’
  ‘No. Give me good news, Vaneclaw, or none at all.’
  The imp stood there and said nothing.

  Vaneclaw is an accident imp (his job description is fairly self explanatory) that also happens to look like an extremely large, four foot tall mushroom. Reuniting with the Devil for the first time in many years – during which he made a man called Ron’s life a misery – he provides much needed comic relief as the story progresses. He is Michael Marshall Smith’s most charming and likeable side character since the talking alarm clock in One of Us, and steals every scene he’s in.

  It would be easy to imagine, with it’s gorgeous cover art and quirky title, that this book is aimed at younger readers. However, this is quite clearly a book for adults – and children who can convincingly lie to their far too uptight parents. The story itself is always engaging, but it’s the way Smith writes the central character that makes the journey worthwhile. Her relationship with her grandfather and the way she deals with the ongoing breakup of her parents is exquisitely written and beautifully authentic. Life is messy at the best of times, even without the Devil’s interventions.

  ‘Mom, we have to go.’
  ‘I can’t.’
  ‘It’s not safe here. We have to go.’
  ‘I can’t leave,’ her mom said, near tears. ‘Ever. There’s no escape. There’s no way out. I have to hide.’
  ‘There’s always a way out,’ Hannah said.

  Even at over 350 pages, this is a novel that finishes far too soon and feels all too brief. It’s an endearing page-turner that effortlessly flits from one scene to the next, dragging the characters along by the scruffs of their necks. Apart from the Devil of course, who plots his own course, a course that is never predictable, with motivations that are not always apparent. As a tale taken literally it wavers here and there – not all questions will be answered, some plot threads simply fizzle out – but the underlying themes are always present, waiting to be lovingly embraced.

  The beauty of Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence is that it takes the mundane and makes a strong argument for its true value. Often, the mundane is simply something priceless taken for granted. Dark, funny and thought-provoking, this is a book that will delight adult readers while providing the perfect ammunition for the next time a child laments that their life is so boring.

  9 OUT 10

• Wired
  https://www.wired.com/2011/07/review-killer-move-by-michael-marshall/
  Word count: 379

  Review: Killer Move by Michael Marshall
  What's more 'exclusive'? An expensive, glossy photo book, or an iPad app? Photo credit Steve Rosenbaum

  Michael Marshall's new novel, *Killer Move *is a lip biting and suspenseful thriller to the end. Bill Moore is a successful yuppie businessman in Sarasota, South Florida who sells luxury condos for a living. In addition to a sweet job that affords him a luxury car and a house in the Keys, he has a beautiful, young wife, Stephanie. Everything seems like a Florida daydream until one day, Bill finds a printed card on his desk with one word on it: "Modified". From that unsettling point on, strange things begin to happen that mysteriously change the course of Bill's life. A book arrives from Amazon that he never ordered. A reservation is "secured" at a high end restaurant that he never made. Bill's wife Stephanie finds half naked pictures of his co-worker on his computer, taken from outside her window. A wealthy client he was "working" for a sales deal goes missing. When his wife also disappears, Bill somehow begins to look like a suspect. Perhaps someone has "modified" Bill Moore's life like a pawn in a nightmarish chess game, someone who has a grudge against him. Who is doing this and for what ungodly reason? And, what is the purpose of the game?

  Moore's svelte descriptions of the landscape and very human dialogue made me believe the characters in the story and want to know more about where their lives were going (what a good plot should do). His narrative touches just enough on the details to keep the reader intrigued. Many critics have compared Moore's writing to Stephen King, but the comparison escapes my grasp. There are some fortuitous similarities where both writers have the ability to describe the everyday and then jar the reader with ghastly surprises, but the similarity with King dies there. In any case, I recommend Killer Move as a suspenseful thriller with some high tech plot threads and horror elements in the storyline. I couldn't put it down, and neither will you, until it's done. Just watch out for loose cards on your dresser before you go to bed.

  #Armchair Geek

• Horror Novel Reviews
  https://horrornovelreviews.com/2013/09/22/michael-marshall-the-straw-men-review/
  Word count: 641

  Michael Marshall ‘The Straw Men’ Review

  Posted on September 22, 2013 in Authors M-Z // 3 Comments

  Rate This

  n24782

  Written by: Wayne C. Rogers

  The Straw Men by Michael Marshall (a.k.a. Michael Marshall Smith, author of Spares, One of Us, and Only Forward) is probably one of the best “serial killer” novels ever written; yet, one readers probably won’t know about.

  Unlike many of the author’s previous futuristic novels, this one takes place in the present day with flashbacks to the past. It’s actually two stories (each story could have easily been turned into a successful novel) in one, which come together during the last hundred pages of the book to create an ending that will scare the living daylights out of you. I kid you not. This writer somehow is able to tap into the perverse evil that mankind is so often capable of perpetrating.

  The first story deals with Ward Hopkins, ex-C.I.A., who returns home to Dyersburg, Montana to attend the funeral of his dead parents, both of which were killed in a tragic car accident. What Ward eventually discovers while going through their home is that his parents may not have been who he thought they were. In fact, they may still be alive, but in hiding from a deadly organization that refers to itself as The Straw Men.

  With the help of his good buddy, C.I.A. agent Bobby Nygard, Ward starts searching for answers and inadvertently sets in motion several attempts by The Straw Men to eliminate both him and his friend.

  The second story deals with a serial killer known as The Upright Man who takes his victims from the Los Angeles area of California. When young Sarah Becker disappears one evening while sitting in front of a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Santa Monica, waiting for her father to return, F.B.I. agent Nina Baynam realizes that The Upright Man has returned after being dormant for two years. She enlists the help of ex LAPD Homicide Detective, John Zandt, who’d once helped her to hunt this serial killer, until his own daughter became a victim.

  John, however, is determined that Sarah Becker isn’t going to die. He’s going to do everything in his power to save her and to kill The Upright Man in a final act of revenge for destroying his life two years before.

  Both stories will slowly converge into one as Ward, Bobby, Nina and John discover that’s there something much more deadly out there than just a single serial killer, and that it’s going to take all of their strength and courage to fight this force of evil that’s killing our children.

  THE STRAW MEN is a tour de force for Michael Marshall. The plot is intricately woven with strong, compelling characters that drive the story forward like a battering ram. Mr. Marshall knows how to end each chapter with a sharp hook that keeps the reader glued to every single page in a frantic attempt to find out what’s going to happen next. The last forty pages of this novel blew me away and will leave you literally speechless, not to mention fearful that the possibility of what the author suggests is, in fact, true.

  The Straw Men is one of those tremendous surprises that all readers of suspense crave from the inner sanctum of their souls. Buy it, read it, pass it on to your friends, then see if you can sleep at night without having nightmares that The Straw Men may be coming for you.

  HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

  Order it here.

  Rating: 5/5

• Speculative Herald
  http://www.speculativeherald.com/2017/09/04/review-hannah-green-and-her-unfeasibly-mundane-existence-by-michael-marshall-smith/
  Word count: 716

  Review: Hannah Green and her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence by Michael Marshall Smith
  September 4, 2017
  Review: Hannah Green and her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence by Michael Marshall SmithHannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence by Michael Marshall Smith
  Published by Harper Voyager on June 1st 2017
  Genres: Urban/Contemporary Fantasy
  Pages: 400
  Format: eARC
  Source: Publisher

  Thanks to Harper Voyager for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

  book-depository-button

  three-stars

  Hannah’s world is turned upside down when her parents split up. But when the Devil wakens from a long nap to discover someone is stealing the evil deeds of humanity, Hannah and her family will be central to putting this right. For various shades of right. He is the Devil, after all.

  I’ve been a big fan of Michael Marshall Smith for years, and his books are few and far enough between that a new one is always a celebration (yes, there are Michael Marshall books between times, but they’re not usually quite the same). I like his narrative tone of voice, and his way of twisting aspects of the real world; I like his ability to provoke melancholy and capture heartache.

  So Hannah Green and her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence had a burden of expectation to live up to – and sets its stall out from the start as being somewhat different to the rest of MMS’s body of (long-form) work. The prologue is mischievous and knowing, breaking the fourth wall and playing with expectations (if anything, it reminds me of the voice-over at the start of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang). And for the first time, we get a heroine – and instead of being a damaged bloke burdened by his own history, Hannah Green is a girl on the edge of puberty.

  If there’s one thing that can puncture the tone of a Michael Marshall Smith novel, you’d think it would be seeing the world through the eyes of an eleven-year-old girl. You’d be right. So much of his work lies on men reflecting on their errors (and their doomed hopes). Hannah brings her confusion and hurt over her parents’ separation, but MMS never loses sight of the fact that his protagonist is a little girl. She brings a lightness to what could (should?) be a dark story, charming in her journey from innocence to experience as she aids the Devil in the hope of healing her family.

  …and this is where I end up conflicted. While this story is charming and fun and exhibits Smith’s trademark humour and ability to home in on the heart, I found it a little bit young for my taste – from its emotional tenor right through to its fairly straightforward plot. If it weren’t for Nash’s POV, I’d cheerfully recommend it to younger readers – although arguably even the hard-boiled criminal with no remorse is really fairly light touch.

  Nash is a petty criminal trying to become a Satanist, worshipping at an empty altar and drawn to do increasingly more terrible deeds to prove his worth. But more is suggested than described, and in the end he feels an awful lot more like a plot device than an antagonist of substance.

  In the end, I think I do lean towards this book working better for a younger audience. I’m not sure if that’s who it’s intended for, but if it brings a new generation to MMS and his dark worlds, I can’t be sorry.

  I can just hope there’s a more grown up book in MMS’s future.
  three-stars

  About Latest Posts

  Anna Chapman
  Anna Chapman
  I've been reading for nearly as long as I've been walking, arguably with greater success (or at least fewer bruises). I never did grow out of my love for fantasy, space opera and speculative fiction, and I never intend to.

  More reviews and other opinions at x+1 (there's always room for one more).

• New York Journal of Books
  https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/anomaly
  Word count: 717

  The Anomaly
  Image of The Anomaly
  Author(s):
  Michael Rutger
  Release Date:
  June 19, 2018
  Publisher/Imprint:
  Grand Central Publishing
  Pages:
  352
  Buy on Amazon
  Reviewed by:
  Michael J. McCann

  “For fans of the Indiana Jones movies and television series such as Fringe, The Anomaly is great escapist entertainment for the summer cottage or those long vacation drives across the country.”

  Nolan Moore is a celebrity archaeologist specializing in unsolved mysteries. His slogan is, “It matters not whether we find; it only matters that we continue to seek.” His video program, The Anomaly Files, is relegated to a small YouTube audience, but when he and his team receive a grant from the mysterious Palinhem Foundation to pursue their latest project, visions of a network television slot dance in their heads.

  Following up on the work of the 19th century geologist and explorer John Wesley Powell and Smithsonian scout G. E. Kincaid, whose adventures made the newspapers in 1909, Nolan and his crew enter the Grand Canyon in search of a cavern somewhere in the rock face that is said to lead to a strange network of tunnels and an incredible secret.

  Astonished that for once his research has produced an actual discovery, Nolan leads his team forward, camera rolling, only to have their adventure crash to a sudden halt in a nasty turn that puts all their lives at risk. What is the secret of the cavern and its passages? Will Nolan and his crew survive to tell the world about their discovery, or is this something too horrible to let loose on the world?

  The Anomaly is an adventure-thriller by Michael Rutger, a.k.a. Michael Marshall Smith, that aspires to a place on the bookshelf next to Michael Crichton and Preston and Child. A screenwriter, Rutger uses obvious references to Raiders of The Lost Ark and Alien, among other films, to appeal to fans of the weird and creepy.

  The novel is divided into thirds. Part One introduces us to Nolan and his production crew, gets them into the Grand Canyon, and delivers them to the doorstep of their discovery. As an opening 100 pages, it's really quite good. Rutger uses humor effectively to develop his characters, and his narrative at this point is clean and uncluttered, moving the reader steadily forward.

  Part Two, in which their experience takes a sudden turn for the worse, unfortunately fails to maintain the same high standard of storytelling. The action slows to a crawl as the characters bumble around in claustrophobic darkness reacting to the weird things that start to happen. The mystery looms, unexplained. The plot struggles, its pulse thready.

  When Part Three finally arrives, for those who are still tuned in, the answers to all our questions are revealed, and they turn out to be rather implausible but definitely strange and fantastic, in the old pulp magazine sense of the words.

  Rutger writes well when he wants to, occasionally showing a deft touch with his characters. Early on, when Nolan experiences a dark night of the soul, he reflects that “losing your mother is the burning down of your own personal Library of Alexandria.”

  On the other hand, producer Ken's potty mouth is not to be tolerated, character trait or not, and the chapter that plops Mollie's backstory into an already viscous Part Two is a mistake that should have been edited out.

  Also on the subject of editing, the photographs peppered throughout the book, ostensibly “From the Files of Nolan Moore,” while intended to enhance verisimilitude, reproduce mostly as black-and-grey blotches and likewise should have been dropped.

  For fans of the Indiana Jones movies and television series such as Fringe, The Anomaly is great escapist entertainment for the summer cottage or those long vacation drives across the country. If you're heading for the Grand Canyon, it might be just the thing.

  Michael J. McCann’s crime novel Sorrow Lake was shortlisted for the 2015 North American Hammett Prize for literary excellence in crime fiction. His latest novel is Burn Country, the second March and Walker Crime Novel.
  Buy on Amazon

• Cemetary Dance
  https://www.cemeterydance.com/extras/review-the-anomaly-by-michael-rutger/
  Word count: 431

  Review: The Anomaly by Michael Rutger
  Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on July 2, 2018Categories ReviewsTags Dave Simms, Michael Rutger, Reviews, The Anomaly

  The Anomaly by Michael Rutger
  Grand Central Publishing (June 2018)
  352 pages; $17.38 hardcover; $13.99 e-book
  Reviewed by Dave Simms

  Every once in a while, a book comes along to remind you how much fun reading can be. Thrillers usually fill that void pretty well. Add in some darkness, and opening the covers can feel like a rollercoaster ride designed by Rod Serling when arguing with Clive Barker.

  Read through to the end of this review for a shocker…please.

  The Anomaly is that book that takes the reader by surprise. Publishers’ descriptions rarely hit the nail on the head; in this case, it did. A combination of The X-Files with Indiana Jones fits nicely. Except for the protagonist.

  Nolan Moore isn’t quite an archaeologist. He’s definitely not a doctor. Yet he loves his history and conspiracies. He and his boss promote a YouTube show that examines the mysterious unexplained legends of the world.

  Nolan takes his team of misfits into the Grand Cavern to search for something that may have been discovered in 1909. The team does indeed find something — something much more real and interesting than ever touched upon in his shows. People begin to show who they really are, and no one is a throwaway character until the true plan is revealed — and appears to doom Nolan to become a permanent addition to the canyon. What they find is as advertised. Mulder and Indiana would have a field day here, as would Stephen King.

  The trick to this book is the storytelling. It’s solid — much more solid than with typical first-time novelists. The prose is lean and the lines move in waves that keep the reader hypnotized. The twists truly are maze-like in their construction.

  And then…the reveal. Michael Rutger is not who he claimed to be.

  He’s Michael Marshall Smith, the master behind Spares, The Straw Men, Intruders, and so much more.

  This was going to be recommended as one of the best books of the year in any genre before the author revealed himself. After that, it was confirmed.

  The Anomaly is that good. A true ride that won’t take long to finish. Another secret? Rutger/Smith will be back for more.
  Related

  Review: Subhuman (A Unit 51 Novel) by Michael McBrideJuly 23, 2018In "Reviews"

Word Count