ISBN 0-553-09518-8 (US hbk),,, 0-553-57243-1 (US pbk)

"It's called Insomnimania: 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 startingly 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 disturbing questions about the mysterious on-screen personality known only as Auggie.

"Nolan Grobowski is a streetwise 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 him 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 ever deeper into his world of death and fantasy, a killer who is more powerful than either she or Grobowski suspected." [jacket blurb, US hbk, 1994]

"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 your fantasy. And when these fantasies go wrong... Well, it takes one clever detective to unravel the web." --Clifford Stoll (author of The Cuckoo's Egg ).

"The first true twenty-first-century thriller, Terminal Games takes you on a scary funhouse ride beyond the here-and-now to the there-and-then." --Timothy Leary.

"Virtual reality becomes terrifyingly real in this detective story set in cyberspace. With scalpel precision, Terminal Games explores the addictive force of cyberspace, the compelling urgency it has for those who live their real lives in the frictionless spaces of computer networks. A compelling novel that is a must read for anyone interested in the effects of the new technologies on postmodern consciousness." --N.Katherine Hayles (author of Chaos Bound ).

"A very readable book which offers a strange twist on identity in cyberspace." --Henry W.Targowski (in Mark/Space , 26 November 1995).