It’s quite often that i’ll pick up a book and read it without at first realising that I’m actually delving into a series at the wrong point in time. So sometime last year I read Laurel K Hamilton’s Circus of the Damned and have only just got around to acquiring the two novels that come before it in the series, as well as several in the sequence after it, I might add!
And so it was with Michael Marshall’s Blood of Angels, a truly haunting thriller which I discovered was in fact the last of a three volume series! Although the novel is in fact self contained, I can’t help thinking it would have added relish to have read The Straw Men first. Sometimes an author can make it hard for readers who haven’t read the previous in a loose series, but Marshall manages to keep reliance on previous events to a minimum, even though they have a strong causal connection to the story. I will definitely pick up a copy of The Straw Men and The Lonely Dead soon.
As for Blood of Angels, what a powerful and evocative thriller this is, fuelled by the ever present tensions and dangers of the post 9/11 World, but mixing together a number of plot lines – part detective story, part political thriller, part kidnap and chase drama, part love story, Blood of Angels fuses these elements with some fine writing.
In terms of plot, we have the following premise: Notorious serial killer The Upright Man has escaped from a supermax prison. The FBI have no idea how it happened , or where to start looking. Ex-CIA agent Ward Hopkins suspects The Straw Men, a shadowy conspiracy of killers with a macabre agenda. But apart from Ward’s girlfriend Nina, the only person who believes the Straw Men even exist is John Zandt, a homicide detective obsessed with tracking down his daughter’s killers – and who is now wanted for murder himself! The thing is, Ward is right – his brother has broken out for a reason; the Straw Men are planning something big!
Perhaps what struck me the most about the story was what happens with the mysterious Jim, also known as James, for his is the story of being unable to escape, ultimately, one’s own nature, and of the inevitability of the past catching up. In all I really enjoyed reading this book, but would advise reading the series in sequence so you don’t make the same mistake I did 
Comments
About ten years ago I met Peter James in Dillons book store in central Manchester. I was wandering around and decided to head into the bookstore, and was looking around for the horror section, when in walked this jolly curly headed chap and asked an assistant if they had a horror section. Off he went upstairs, so I followed, and it turns out he was there to do a book signing – I bought a couple of his books and he signed them, and we had a chat about writing.
At the time I was in a real writer stuck in a garret situation and was working on a doomed horror novel (well, I now know it was doomed, but I had high hopes for it once), and we talked about the crowded markets and the competition, and he told me it was pretty hard to break in with a first novel. Things have changed quite a lot since then, and while self-publishing opportunities flourish, it’s probably harder than ever to break into the mainstream, and while some writers make it big, others flounder. It’s quite strange that in a world where a horror writer is the world’s bestselling writer, publishers don’t consider there to be a market for new horror writers, or even most of the existing ones (writers are losing their publishers all the time). The relevance of this? Well, Peter James has recently turned away from horror and has been adventuring with crime novels – a shame, since he has a knack for writing damn good horror novels, like The Truth.
When the bank pulls the plug, John and Susan Carter have thirty one days to find one and a half million pounds, or they will lose everything, their home, their business, everything they’ve worked for. Then out of the blue steps Mr Sarotzini, who offers to solve all their problems on just one condition: Susan must be the father of his child. But who is the mysterious Mr Sarotzini, and why does everyone who asks end up dead? How come he knows so much about the Carters? Why does Susan’s prgnancy hurt so much…
In a novel filled with questions, it is indeed a long time before we learn the truth, but in the meantime the story takes us on a rollercoaster of a ride with some well rounded characters, some subtle plotting, and action that carries the reader along through a chilling, unlikely, yet ultimately plausible nightmare that owes only a little of its chill to the supernatural. Most of the horror comes from very human evil, and I won’t be forgetting the inimitable Kundz for a while – a truly nasty character, capable of some very twisted love 
Comments