Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation - Hardcover

Hill, A.W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1582434980 ISBN 13: 9781582434988

Publisher: Counterpoint, 2009

Synopsis

After a young member of the Jehovah's Witness Church is abducted in conjunction with a ritualistic triple homicide in the mountains outside of Los Angeles, the church engages cult specialist Stephan Raszer to find her perilous trail. Based on evidence that the girl may have been trafficked into a sex and terrorism ring with a Middle Eastern nexus, Raszer soon unveils an inside–out reality that begins on the Internet and ends in a fabled fortress on the borderlands of Turkey, Iran, and Iraq, where a powerful figure known only as the Old Man is said to hold the strings.

With the dubious aid of the abductee's wayward sister, along with a renegade CIA agent and a fraternity of sojourning gamesters, Raszer journeys far from the rational world and deep into a dangerous and erotically charged netherland. Piece by piece, he gathers evidence of a world–altering criminal conspiracy linked to an ancient Persian sect that uses an Internet role–playing game to recruit its foot soldiers. To solve the puzzle and find the girl, Stephan Raszer must play the game and try to hold on to his soul and his sanity in a world turned on its head.

About this title

About the Author

Andy Hill is an American music supervisor, record producer, and music educator. Under the name A.W. Hill, Hill has written three novels, Nowhere-Land, The Last Days of Madame Rey, and Enoch's Portal, and a screenplay based on the life of Nikola Tesla.

Reviews

Fans of role-playing games will best appreciate Hill's genre-bending third novel to feature L.A. detective-shaman Stephan Raszer (after The Last Days of Madame Rey). Jehovah's Witness elder Silas Endicott hires Raszer to find his 20-year-old daughter, Katy, abducted by three men in dark business suits after she left an abandoned dance hall high up in a canyon. Raszer probes the twists of fate that led Katy from her life as the last pure thing to an enslaved pawn of a modern descendant of the original assassins. From California and New Mexico to the war-torn borderlands where Turkey, Iran and Iraq meet, Raszer relies on both technology and mystic connections to track Katy. In the end, Raszer must figure out how to penetrate an ancient fortress, where the leader known only as the Old Man holds sway. Hill's overheated and at times laborious mix of religious arcana and the occult may make this a slog for those expecting a conventional thriller. (June)
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The third entry in the Stephan Raszer series is another suspense story that careens between the occult and the street. It’s a mixture of crime, spiritual arcana, fantasy, and some fairly overblown prose that depends quite a bit on the reader suspending disbelief and all hope of understanding much of what’s going on. Plot points are smudgy, characterization is avatar-like, and otherworldly elements murk up the proceedings. But for lovers of occult mysteries, Hill’s explorations may fit the bill. Hero and ex-actor Raszer consults for the LAPD’s Missing Persons Unit and also descends into the underworld of cults to find lost souls. His latest starts with a chilling account of a young man lost inside a reality game and then moves into Raszer’s search for a young female member of Jehovah’s Witnesses who has been kidnapped. Raszer’s investigation jumps from place to place around this world and the world of the alternate-reality game. Sometimes gripping; sometimes grossly overplayed. --Connie Fletcher

Edition details

• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1582434980
• ISBN 13: 9781582434988
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 388