AUDIOBOOK
About
Every hour, childlike Marc Rochat circles the Lausanne cathedral as the watchmen have done for centuries. Then one day a beautiful woman draws him out of the shadows-the angel his mother once promised him would come.
But Katherine Taylor is no angel. She's one of the toughest and most resourceful call girls in Lausanne. Until something unnatural seething beneath a new client's request sends her fleeing to the sanctuary of an unlikely protector.
Into their refuge comes Jay Harper. The private detective has awakened in Lausanne with no memory of how he got there-and only one thing driving him forward: a series of unsettling murders he feels compelled to solve.
Pray for the three strangers. They have something in common they can't begin to imagine.
"A seductive cosmic thriller stoked by historic fact, an ancient Jewish religious text, and a literary classic... Steele's lavishly atmospheric, witty, bloody, and swashbuckling tale of age-old struggles for dominion between angels and demons is the propitious first book in an ambitious series."-Booklist (starred)
"An imaginative metaphysical thriller… Steele keeps his tale tantalizingly ambiguous, casting it with fey characters and skillfully concealing until the climax whether apparent weird events haven't been manipulated to make them seem so. This solidly plotted tale, the first in a trilogy, will appeal to readers who like a hint of uncanny in their fiction."-Publishers Weekly
"A first novel (and first in a series) from Steele, for years a master cameraman for Independent Television News and author of War Junkie, an underground classic; really smart work for serious thriller readers."-Library Journal
"Reads like Paradise Lost by way of John Connolly, although Steele, formerly a war reporter, brings hard-edged modernity to this timeless tale as he roots his depiction of evil in the contemporary world. Clever, stylish and epic in scale, it's a tremendously satisfying debut."-Irish Times JON STEELE is an award-winning journalist and author of The Watchers and Angel City. Born in Spokane, Washington, he traveled the world, working as a cameraman for Independent Television News. After a twenty-year career, Steele wrote the critically acclaimed War Junkie. He cowrote, codirected, and shot Baker Boys: Inside the Surge, a documentary about an American combat unit in Iraq. He lives in Switzerland.
One
Marc Rochat pulled aside the lace curtains and watched the rain fall through lamplight and splash on the cobblestones of Escaliers du Marché. Tiny streams formed between the cobblestones and ran down to bigger streams of rain from Rue Mercerie. The two roads, narrow and angled at a steep slant, met just beyond the windows of Café du Grütli. Rochat breathed against the cold glass; he drew a rawboned face in the quick-spreading fog.
"I see you, I see you hiding in the rain. You can't fool me. En garde."
He wiped away the face and turned back to the warmth of the café.
It was a familiar place to Rochat. He came here most evenings for his supper. He liked the round lamps hanging from the ceiling that glowed like full moons. He liked the photographs of Lausanne from longtimes ago hanging on the walls. He liked the chalk script menu above the bar that never changed. Monsieur Dufaux, the owner of the café, washed the slate and rewrote the menu each day, but the letters were always the same and always in the same place, just like the patrons. Madame Budry with her sixth glass of Villette, Monsieur Duvernay with his Friday night filets de porc avec pommes frites, the Lausanne University professor and his wife who rarely spoke to each other but read many books, the Algerian street cleaners who stopped in each night for espresso and cigarettes. And Monsieur Junod, pushing through the curtains at the door just now, followed by his little white dog on a lead. Always at the same time, a
But Katherine Taylor is no angel. She's one of the toughest and most resourceful call girls in Lausanne. Until something unnatural seething beneath a new client's request sends her fleeing to the sanctuary of an unlikely protector.
Into their refuge comes Jay Harper. The private detective has awakened in Lausanne with no memory of how he got there-and only one thing driving him forward: a series of unsettling murders he feels compelled to solve.
Pray for the three strangers. They have something in common they can't begin to imagine.
"A seductive cosmic thriller stoked by historic fact, an ancient Jewish religious text, and a literary classic... Steele's lavishly atmospheric, witty, bloody, and swashbuckling tale of age-old struggles for dominion between angels and demons is the propitious first book in an ambitious series."-Booklist (starred)
"An imaginative metaphysical thriller… Steele keeps his tale tantalizingly ambiguous, casting it with fey characters and skillfully concealing until the climax whether apparent weird events haven't been manipulated to make them seem so. This solidly plotted tale, the first in a trilogy, will appeal to readers who like a hint of uncanny in their fiction."-Publishers Weekly
"A first novel (and first in a series) from Steele, for years a master cameraman for Independent Television News and author of War Junkie, an underground classic; really smart work for serious thriller readers."-Library Journal
"Reads like Paradise Lost by way of John Connolly, although Steele, formerly a war reporter, brings hard-edged modernity to this timeless tale as he roots his depiction of evil in the contemporary world. Clever, stylish and epic in scale, it's a tremendously satisfying debut."-Irish Times JON STEELE is an award-winning journalist and author of The Watchers and Angel City. Born in Spokane, Washington, he traveled the world, working as a cameraman for Independent Television News. After a twenty-year career, Steele wrote the critically acclaimed War Junkie. He cowrote, codirected, and shot Baker Boys: Inside the Surge, a documentary about an American combat unit in Iraq. He lives in Switzerland.
One
Marc Rochat pulled aside the lace curtains and watched the rain fall through lamplight and splash on the cobblestones of Escaliers du Marché. Tiny streams formed between the cobblestones and ran down to bigger streams of rain from Rue Mercerie. The two roads, narrow and angled at a steep slant, met just beyond the windows of Café du Grütli. Rochat breathed against the cold glass; he drew a rawboned face in the quick-spreading fog.
"I see you, I see you hiding in the rain. You can't fool me. En garde."
He wiped away the face and turned back to the warmth of the café.
It was a familiar place to Rochat. He came here most evenings for his supper. He liked the round lamps hanging from the ceiling that glowed like full moons. He liked the photographs of Lausanne from longtimes ago hanging on the walls. He liked the chalk script menu above the bar that never changed. Monsieur Dufaux, the owner of the café, washed the slate and rewrote the menu each day, but the letters were always the same and always in the same place, just like the patrons. Madame Budry with her sixth glass of Villette, Monsieur Duvernay with his Friday night filets de porc avec pommes frites, the Lausanne University professor and his wife who rarely spoke to each other but read many books, the Algerian street cleaners who stopped in each night for espresso and cigarettes. And Monsieur Junod, pushing through the curtains at the door just now, followed by his little white dog on a lead. Always at the same time, a