Free of Mr. Read's marionette strings, they continue to surprise us up through the novel's final startling sentence.

The advancing rats danced and jerked as though on marionette strings.

Numbers spread out beneath them, hovering just above the desk surface, as if suspended by invisible marionette strings.

The effects here are stagy, and the characters move as if jerked by marionette strings.

There's plenty of exposure for the denialists - they have the powerful oil lobby pulling their marionette strings.

Their arms and legs moved as if operated by marionette strings, jerking up and forward and slapping down.

Zagallo has liberated this team from its marionette strings and allowed it to entertain as well as to win.

We thought our marionette strings were unbreakable.

Their mouths are moved by a trigger at the bottom, and invisible marionette strings work from above on other parts, such as hands and feet.

Jersey City is a place, after all, where the marionette strings of the Democratic machine once threaded through almost every local institution.