Implausibilities in the Opening Scene of Straw Men, A Novel by Michael Marshall

Sat, Feb 14, 2009

I ordered this after seeing an intriguing summary in a recent TLS. The opening scene involves a McDonald’s shoot-’em-up, where there are two shooters. The older of the two shoots the younger and flees. If I understood the exposition correctly, no one ever realized, police and all, that there were two shooters.

If television has taught me anything, it’s that forensic analysis, even in 1991, would reveal a) that the younger shooter’s death was not self-inflicted and b) that there were two guns used in the massacre. Now the TLS article mentioned something about “plutocrat hunter-gatherers” who are part of some type of serial murdering cult, and that sounds too sociologically interesting to abandon at this point; but I’m reading under protest.