Intruders » (Unabridged)

Michael Marshall is a screenwriter and the internationally bestselling author of The Intruders and the acclaimed trilogy of The Straw Men, The Upright Man, and Blood of Angels. He lives in London.

For ex-cop Jack Whalen, it all begins with a visit from a childhood friend, a lawyer who needs Jack's help. The family of a noted scientist has been senselessly, brutally murdered, and the scientist is nowhere to be found.

But Jack has more pressing concerns. The past that drove him from the L.A.P.D. continues to haunt him. And his wife has disappeared during a routine business trip to Seattle. She never checked into her hotel, she isn't answering her cell phone. She is gone.

A third missing person, a little girl in Oregon, is found miles away. But it soon becomes obvious that she is not an innocent victim . . . and far from defenseless.

Something very strange is happening—a perplexing series of troubling events that's leading Jack Whalen into the shadows. And the secrets buried there are unlike anything he, or anyone, could possibly have imagined.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

Although there is nothing showy or even stylish about his prose, Mr. Marshall (whose other credits include The Straw Men) tells a nerve-racking story full of bizarre twists. That it initially offers so little only adds to its later surprise value. The Intruders, which seems like such a ploddingly literal-minded title for a book that begins with a home invasion, turns out to signal a sci-fi horrific strain, one that guarantees puzzling questions about the characters' true identities and motives…Mr. Marshall recalls Stephen King's ability to set a story in the world of the commonplace, then suddenly jolt it into a more hellish realm. He also has some of Mr. King's ability to rivet attention with eerie surprises. It's not necessary to believe this book's spooky underlying premise to be caught up in the campfire-tale power of its action.