Terminal Games: A Cyberthriller - Softcover

Perriman, Cole

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553572431 ISBN 13: 9780553572438

Publisher: Bantam, 1995

Synopsis

When subscribers to a late-night Internet fantasy service begin to die mysteriously, Marianne Hedison contacts the police, believing that she has found the murderer online, but Detective Nolan Grobowski thinks that Marianne is the killer. Reprint.

About this title

From the Publisher

"In the best-selling tradition of Michael Chrichton's Jurassic Park and Thomas Harris's The Silence Of The Lambs, Cole Perriman combines high-tech chills with nonstop suspense to create one of the most imaginative, original, and sure-to-be-talked-about thrillers of the year. It's called Insomniamania: a late-night computer recreational network where subscribers across the country log on to live out their wildest fantasies. Members can eavesdrop on conversations in Ernie's Bar, play poker in the Casino del Camino, engage in safe, anonymous sex in the Pleasure Dome, watch or commit murders in the Snuff room. Then an Insomnimania subscriber is found in a classy hotel with his throat slit -- and the ultimate high-tech fantasy explodes in a real-life nightmare. The first person to realize what's happening is Marianne Hedison, who stumbles on to a crime scene that looks startling familiar: it is identical to the animated murder she had seen the night before on her computer screen. As other subscribers begin to die in increasingly bizarre and violent ways, Marianne begins to see a chilling pattern in the murders -- and to have a disturbing questions about the mysterious on-screen personality known only as Auggie. Nolan Grobowski is a steetwise veteran LAPD detective who doesn't know a mouse from a modem, but his initial distrust of Marianne dissolves as she introduces him to the world of Insomnimania and helps track a killer unlike any he has ever encountered. The deeper his attraction to Marianne becomes, the more Grobowski risks in accepting her help. For through her keyboard MarIanne has entered a deadly liaison with a twisted killer who draws her even deeper into his world of death and fantasy, a killer who is more powerful than either she or Grobowski suspected. Fast-paced, terrifying, and all to possible, Terminal Games is a highly original thriller that will keep readers turning pages -- and guessing -- until its shattering climax. Cole Perriman is a pseudonym for a Portland, Oregon, writer who explores the light and dark sides of new technologies. Perriman has been a teacher, editor, playwright, writer of software manuals, visual artist, waiter, back-to-the-lander, pizza cook, and horse breeder and trainer. Perriman has written other novels and nonfiction works.

"What happens when virtual reality sneaks into real life? Or reality reaches into cyberspace? And cybernauts connect to psychopaths? Today's interactive networks let you create a persona straight from you fantasy. And when these fantasies go wrong.... Well, it takes one clever detective to unravel the web. Terminal Games is the first detective story set in the world of interactive networks, where you are whoever you wish to be." --Clifford Stoll, author of The Cuckoo's Egg

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0553572431
• ISBN 13: 9780553572438
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 560