Saturday, April 28, 2012

THE INTRUDERS by Michael Marshall Smith_Review

The IntrudersThe Intruders by Michael Marshall

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Can I give it 17 stars, or 26?


Stunning. Awe-inspiring. Metaphysical. Beyond Reality. Supreme. Michael Marshall Smith shares a gift in common with the equally superb Kealan Patrick Burke: literary eyes that glimpse beyond what we in consensus reality perceive, and not just glimpse, but observe-study-analyse-consider-recount. “The Intruders” is over-the-top perfect, as is Mr. Smith’s “Bad Things,” and although I read it through apace, I am at a loss for description. Reading his novels (and Mr. Burke’s) is like coming upon a Universal Translator, and for the first time, reading novels in a language you never knew.

Jack Whalen is a former L.A. cop-no, surprisingly, not a detective. Just a ten-year patrol veteran, who put together a book of places, photographs and text, called “The Intruders,” picturing locations of home invasions and other such often-fatal effrontery. His wife Amy, a big wheel in advertising, decides they should lease a country home about an hour and a half from Seattle-because with her new higher position, she needs only ready access to an airport, occasionally. Jack is currently stuck in place, unable to find a hook to a second book, but all that is shunted aside as his life begins to unravel, and he discovers his wife is not whom he thought at all-and in ways no one could ever imagine.
When you read “The Intruders,” I think you might never look at life in the same way again. Certainly I will not.




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