The Lonely Dead Michael Marshall HarperCollins, £10 Rel: Apr 2004 Reviewed by Matt Craig

In 2002 Michael Marshall Smith, a force in weird scifi/horror, dropped the Smith and published The Straw Men under the name Michael Marshall. The book appealed to fans of both the crime and horror genres and made a lot of "Best of 2002" lists. This year, Michael Marshall brings Ward Hopkins, John Zandt, Nina Baynam and the Upright Man back for the stunning sequel, The Lonely Dead.

Set three months after the events that closed the first book, The Lonely Dead finds Ward Hopkins on the run from the powerful group that killed his parents and his best friend. Ex-L.A. Detective John Zandt appears to be critically out of touch with reality, on a crusade to find the Upright Man, Ward's brother, the man who killed and literally disassembled his daughter. Nina Baynam is back at work for the FBI, investigating the murder of a young woman who has been found with a computer hard-drive stuffed in her mouth. And somewhere in northern Washington a killer, wracked by guilt, walks into the forest with enough drink and pills to kill an elephant and comes face to face with an American legend that causes him to re-evaluate everything.

From the opening page, Marshall makes two things clear: he's back to give you a hell of a ride, and the Straw Men are still out there, waiting for the right moment to take their revenge. Like the first novel, the story is told both from the first-person perspective of Hopkins and the third-person perspective of all the other characters. With its grisly opening chapter, the story moves at a cracking pace from pure horror through standard crime fare to a gripping whodunit that can still take the time to explore, and explain, some of America's oldest legends. And as the end approaches, the last sixty pages or so, the book will grab you by the throat and hold you for as long as it takes.

The Lonely Dead is a worthy sequel to a great book. With the characters and situations firmly in place from The Straw Men, Marshall is free to engage in pure storytelling. The blistering pace means that this book is all too short and will leave you gasping for more. And with an ending that wraps things up quite neatly, but not too neatly, this reader is filled with hope that Ward and company will return in the near future for a third instalment.