Blood of Angels by Michael Marshall
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 