In Montana, a man attends the funeral of his parents, ostensibly killed in a car crash. In Los Angeles, a fifteen-year-old girl is abducted by a man assumed dead. These events are linked by the fact that in both there is something missing. As there is in so much of the

world, for so much of the time. What's missing is a secret, something which strikes at the heart of what it is to be human. What it is that makes us this way. "Sarah tries to struggle, but the man holds her. The scream never makes it out of her

throat… Sarah is the fifth girl to be abducted by this maniac. Her long hair will be hacked off and she will be tortured. She has about a week to live… Former LA homicide detective John Zandt has an inside track on the perpetrator — his own daughter was one of his victims. But the key to Sarah's whereabouts lies with Ward Hopkins, a man with a past so secret not even he knows about it. As he investigates his past. Ward finds himself drawn into the sinister world of the Straw Men — and into the desperate race to find Sarah, before her time runs out…"

"Brilliantly written and scary as hell." Stephen King.

Michael Marshall is a novelist and screenwriter. He has already established a successful writing career under the name Michael Marshall Smith. His groundbreaking first novel, Only Forward, won the Philip K. Dick and August Derleth awards; its critically-acclaimed successors. Spares and One of Us, have both been optioned for film. He lives in North London.