Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence

It's great to see Michael Marshall donning the Smith part of his name again. The SF novels he published under that byline are among my very favourites, funny, sassy, imaginative and clever. This new book carries on that tradition, although it's not really SF, more a tale of higher powers interfering with mortal(ish) lives. Hannah Green is a young girl living in Santa Cruz who takes refuge from the breakup of her parents' marriage in staying with her eccentric grandfather. In another strand of the plot, there's a guy walking round who seems to be locating evildoers and then out-evilling them. What's he up to? What's his connection with Hannah's grandfather?

Anything more would be too spoilery, but you can be assured that this lives up to the reputation of the earlier MMS books. If I had to grumble, I'd say that tonally it can be a bit weird - there are long stretches where I was thinking that my bookworm nine year old daughter would really love this, and then there's a sudden burst of casual violence that drives those thoughts right out. Nevertheless, it's a fine read. It's funny, inventive, and reads like a modern fairytale. It also does a good job of making a good guy out of possibly the least likely candidate ever for such a role. If the lead character of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens had been an eleven year old Californian girl, it might have turned out a bit like this, and that's pretty high praise where I'm concerned