The Intruders by Michael Marshall
British author Marshall began writing stylish SF novels as Michael Marshall Smith – winning the Philip K Dick Award for his debut Only Forward, which I’ve been meaning to re-read for years! After a few more, he dropped the ‘Smith’ and moved into the world of creepy thrillers winning plaudits for The Straw Men and its follow-ups.
I was spurred on to read this one from my shelves by its current TV adaptation. Having seen the first two creepy parts last week, I decided to find out what goes on to happen on the page first rather than the screen. These episodes actually mirrored the novel very closely and now I know…
The prologue starts with the doorbell ringing at the Anderson home, Gina is at home with her son:
She flipped the porch light on. It showed a man in his mid-fifties, with short, dark hair, sallow skin in flat planes around his face. His eyes seemed dark too, almost black. They gave no impression of depth, as if they had been painted on his head from the outside.
‘I’m looking for William Anderson,’ he said.
‘He’s not here right now. Who are you?’
‘Agent Shepherd,’ the man said, and then paused, for a deep cough. ‘Mind if I come inside?’
Gina did mind, but he just stepped up onto the porch and walked right past her and into the house.
No prizes for working out that Gina and her son will soon be dead.
Jack Whalen was a cop in LA. Was – he left in undisclosed circumstances, moving with his wife to a little town in Washington state inland from Seattle. Jack is now an author, first book published – second one not yet in his head. Amy works for an advertising company in Seattle and occasionally has to stop over in the city. The weirdness starts when Amy is away on a trip and Jack receives a call from a taxi driver on Amy’s phone. She’d left it in the cab. Jack tells the driver to take it to her hotel where he’ll get paid.
Jack rings the hotel to find out that she’s not there, no reservation. He arranges to collect the phone and goes into Seattle. Thinking to surprise her at work, he finds she’s not there either. Uh-oh – is she with someone else?
Cut to the other main strand of the story. Ten year old Madison is sitting on the shore at her family’s beach house, when a man in black arrives. ‘Can you keep a secret?’ he asks. Soon, she goes missing …
Later on, getting slowly drunk at a bar, Jack is examining Amy’s phone. There are loads of weird texts on it. He’s suspicious – meeting up with the taxi driver, he asks him to take him where he dropped off Amy – but they end up in a fight with some heavies who don’t want them there.
When he gets back home, Amy’s there. She seems to have an explanation that fits for where she’s been. Life carries on. Except that Amy is different. She suddenly likes jazz where she hated it before; she was always a coffee drinker, and now prefers tea.
Then Gary Fisher comes back into Jack’s life. They were at school together, Gary is now a lawyer, and after seeing Jack’s book, he gets in contact with Jack to ask for his help.
By this stage I had many questions: Has Amy been brainwashed? What came over Madison to make her ‘run away’? What is her connection to Agent Shepherd? Who is Bill Anderson? Is any of this linked? Is Jack just paranoid and jealous? What is Jack’s back story? At least on that front he starts to explain(!):
I was on the job for ten years. I turned up and did what I was paid to do, entering people’s lives only when they’d begun to go wrong. after the God of Bad Things had decided to pay a call. In the end my own life started to skew, as policemen’s lives do. The problem with being a cop is you wander into the field of play of the God of Bad Things so often that you wind up permanently on his radar – as a meddler, a spoiler, someone who has tried to mitigate his attempts to stir disappointment and pain into the lives of humankind. The God of Bad Things is a shitty little god, but He has a great memory and a long attention span. Once you’ve caught his eye you’re there for good. He becomes you own personal imp, perching on your shoulder and shitting down your back.
It carries on getting creepier and creepier. Naturally, the book’s title and its tagline ‘they’re already inside’ imply some horror scenario to come and I can assure you that there is plenty. Who are they? Even after the big reveal towards the end of the book, there is a neat little sting in the tail. I daren’t say more in case any of you are watching the TV series.
I found Jack a difficult character to sympathise with at all. At the start, he has compartmentalised his life, shutting off the bit that was a policeman – but once a cop, always a cop – and he was one with a bit of a chip on his shoulder, remaining in uniform. It seemed unlikely that a high flyer like Amy would fall for a beat cop – meanwhile, Amy is notable by her absence for most of the novel.
I also felt that Madison was largely extraneous to the main plot – she only has a relevance to the man in black, Shepherd. Whether he’s actually an agent, a hit-man or plain psychopath, Shepherd is by far the most interesting character!
The TV series was made by BBC America, and has two Brits starring – John Simm as Jack, and James Frain as Shepherd; Amy is played by Mira Sorvino. It has a noirish feel, with lots of night-time shots and certainly feeds on paranoia and brings the conspiracy theories to the front – although we have no idea what they are! It’s settling in to be good and dark and confusing, but now 3 episodes in (Mondays 9pm, BBC2) so you’ll need to catch up via iPlayer.
This novel was an good introduction to Marshall’s chiller output. Reading the reviews, there seems to be a consensus that it’s not his best, but I although I found the characters mostly aloof and hard to engage with, the mystery did keep me reading, so it was quite compulsive in that respect – like Twin Peaks without the funny bits. I shall look forward to reading The Straw Men which is also on my shelves. (7/10)
Source: Own copy. To explore further on Amazon UK, please click below:
Intruders by Michael Marshall, 2007. Harper paperback 496 pages.
The Straw Men (2002)
Only Forward as Michael Marshall Smith (1994)
Nice Review. I read this a couple of months back and felt much the same. The premise was interesting enough to keep me interested but I felt the characters could have been more richly drawn.
The three sci-fi novels he wrote as Michael Marshall Smith rank as some of my favourite novels ever so I’m not put off reading some of his other books based on this one.
I believe I read some book by Michael Marshall a while ago — I had it in my head that I had — but I’m wondering now if I was wrong. I don’t recognize ANY of the titles of his books; the only similarity between this and my memory is that I have a vague feeling I did not connect with his characters emotionally.
In any case, this sounds wonderfully scary.