Blood of Angels Book

Once upon a time, Michael Marshall Smith was a fresh, exciting voice in the genres of the fantastic. He announced his arrival with "Only Forward," an electrifying debut that spiked its science fiction thrills with a dash of Barkerish horror and Pythonesque humor. His follow-up, "Spares," wasn't too shabby either, and he racked up a handful of award-winning short stories.

Then he shaved off the end of his name and took a dive into the lucrative mediocrity of the serial killer novel. His first foray, "The Straw Men," isn't bad actually -- a step up from the standard Dean Koontz drivel. That was followed by "The Upright Man," a sequel of diminishing returns. And "Blood of Angels" makes a trilogy, a conclusion (at least as far as I'm concerned) so haphazardly constructed that I'm surprised the book didn't crumble apart in my hands as I turned the pages.

Marshall's loose coalition of current and former law enforcement officials and conspiracy nuts continues to battle an underground cabal of serial killers that has orchestrated all of human history (coz if there's one thing we all know about the psycho killer it's that he's a team player). At this point, the trilogy's central idea, never that strong to begin with, feels played out, whatever creative juice it had long since dried up. "Blood of Angels" doesn't even qualify as a good junk food read. It feels exhausted and listless, an empty exercise, a thriller sans thrills. A subplot concerning teenage whiteboy suburban drug dealers serves only to further gum up an already logy narrative.

In addition to the lackluster storytelling, there are numerous flubs probably attributable to the author being British and the editor not paying attention: Doritos and Fritos are referred to as "potato" chips. El Lay kids sling London slang. All weapons are labeled generic "guns." Ostensibly professional federal agents carry said "guns" in their pockets instead of securely fastened in a holster where any joker couldn't snatch them away. A character in the back of a cop car casually tosses stuff into the front seat. I could be accused of nitpicking, but it's those kind of little details that contribute to a sense of realism, to the reader's suspension of disbelief, and this book needs all of that it can get.

As "Blood of Angels" meanders along to its weak-kneed whimper of a finish, it continues to pile up typos and lapses in logic. Marshall writes as if he's in a rush to finish and go do something more fun: "I oriented myself in relation to the body by from the direction of curve in the revealed sections of seven ribs." He and his editor obviously weren't much more interested in the project than I was.