THE
INTRUDERS
by Michael
Marshall
ISBN-10: 0061235024
ISBN-13: 978-0061235023
published by William
Morrow
reviewed by Adam Armstrong
03.30.2008
Former LAPD Jack
Whalen has given up the badge and moved to Washington State in order to pursue a new life in writing
after selling a book more or less by chance. His life is swimming along, though
his writing is flailing, until an old acquaintance from High School shows up
and starts asking him about a murder he knows nothing about. Soon a series of
murders and acts of violence start to tie their way around him. Meanwhile, a
little 9-year-old girl, Madison, decides to walk out of her life and find a way
to Seattle. She has no idea why she is going there
but Madison is finding that she can get what she
wants from anyone using any means imaginable. The two are on a collision course
that Jack is discovering and that Madison, to her horror, finds that she is
remembering.
There are so
many great things to say about this book, and so little space to do it. Michael
Marshall (Smith) has once again taken those questions, which plague us late at
night when we can’t sleep, and brought them out in the sun to be examined. He
has a quality of realistic, funny, and horrific writing that would line him up
with Stephen King and Jonathan Carroll. Though (when writing under the
shortened named Marshall) he never goes for the monsters or other bogeymen, he
focuses on the truly scary: that which could be real with a small stretch of
the imagination. This book will keep you thinking after you’ve finished it and
you’re lying in bed listening to the noises of your house settling. Or maybe
the house isn’t settling…
5 out of 5,
pick up a copy.
Pick up your own copy at Amazon.com: The
Intruders