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The Straw Men return, Avril 13 2004
Michael Marshall's novel "The Straw Men" was one of the best books I read in 2003. It told the story of a shadowy group of powerful figures that believed a disease called civilization infected the majority of the human race. These "Straw Men" maintained a tradition dating back to the earliest days of the human race, a time when human beings performed rituals to honor the ancient gods in exchange for power and health. A central tenet of these rituals involved, and continues to involve, human sacrifice. Using their positions of power and influence, the Straw Men employ various men and women around the world as procurers of victims. One of these men, sometimes known as the Upright Man, ran up against trouble in the form of a Los Angeles police detective named John Zandt, FBI agent Nina Baynam, and a smart mouthed former CIA operative named Ward Hopkins when he abducted a young girl. Zandt, Baynam, and Hopkins soon learned the Upright Man was involved in a series of bizarre incidents, including the abduction of John Zandt's own daughter and the disappearance of Hopkins's parents. A lengthy investigation of the Upright Man lead to startling revelations about Hopkins's childhood, and eventually led to a showdown between the three heroes and the Straw Men in a place called The Halls, Montana."The Upright Man" is Marshall's latest entry in what looks to be a multi-volume series about the Straw Men. Set roughly three months after the explosive confrontation at The Halls, the book reintroduces us to Nina, Ward, and to a lesser extent John as the trio continues to track down the Upright Man. Hopkins dropped out of sight for awhile after the incident in Montana before realizing he had to resume his search for the Straw Men. Zandt, after a brief dalliance with Nina, fled to Florida. Nina Baynam continues to work with her partner at the bureau. It isn't too long before more gruesome murders register on the radar. A slain LAPD cop leads to the discovery of a young woman's body in a nearby motel where suspicious evidence found on the scene leads Nina to suspect the Upright Man is once again on the prowl, a suspicion soon reinforced by two subsequent murders in Portland and Seattle. It seems the Straw Men took a little time to regroup from the fiasco in Montana, and now the ancient society is on the hunt for the three individuals who nearly brought them down. Meanwhile, Ward Hopkins approaches the Upright Man from a different direction. Reassessing evidence discovered in his parents' house after their disappearance, Ward heads to San Francisco to search for the serial killer. He learns a lot about his own childhood in the process. He also learns that the Upright Man left a bloody swath through several foster families as a youth. The disparate facts Hopkins accumulates during his investigations in San Francisco start to gel after he reestablishes contact with Nina Baynam. The murders of the young woman in Los Angeles, a restaurant owner in Portland, and a hotel manager in Seattle couldn't seem further apart in terms of style and motive, but when taken together and fused with the evidence gleaned from the Upright Man's other crimes, everything eventually falls into place. Oddly enough, the crimes lead Zandt, Nina, and Hopkins to a small town called Sheffer, a place where a man named Tom Kozelek claimed to have encountered a Bigfoot during a botched suicide attempt in the deep woods. Confused? You will be during most of the book. Trust me when I say it all comes together in the end. "The Straw Men" worked as well as it did because you could cut the creepy atmosphere with a knife. I read the novel nearly fourteen months ago and still remember the pervasive sense of weirdness when Ward Hopkins found a note from his deceased parents saying, "We're not dead." And that was only one particular eerie scene in a book full of them. "The Straw Men" took the reader on a roller coaster ride through the horrific hidden recesses of the America. "The Upright Man" isn't nearly as chilling as "The Straw Men," unfortunately, but it is required reading for anyone who read and enjoyed the first book. The introductory chapter does resemble in no small way many of the set pieces in the "The Straw Men," but after that the novel settles down quite a bit. What the book does do is give the reader a little more background on the connection between Ward Hopkins and the Upright Man first established in "The Straw Men," as well as explaining a few more details about the Straw Men and how they came into existence. Another difference between the two books is the relegation of John Zandt, the tormented cop with a personal vendetta against the serial killer who took his daughter away from him, to a minor role here. I never gave a thought to the idea that "The Straw Men" would have a sequel even though the story left itself open for one. I was strolling through a brick and mortar the other day and just happened to catch a glimpse of the cover of "The Upright Man" on a rack of recently released paperback fiction. I immediately recognized the book for what it was and so beat a hasty path to the rack. I think I plowed over at least two toddlers and an old lady with a walker before laying my hands on a copy. I have rarely been so pumped to read a book. Well, "The Upright Man" isn't as good as its predecessor, but it's good enough to keep me reading if Marshall decides to release further tomes in the future.
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