Terminal Games

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 startlingly 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.
Fast-paced, terrifying, and all too possible, Terminal Games is a highly original thriller that will keep readers turning pages - and guessing - until its shattering climax.