The Watchers

April 30, 2012
Switzerland’s Lausanne cathedral serves as a fitting backdrop for Steele’s first novel, an imaginative metaphysical thriller. Slow-witted Marc Rochat, who’s served for years as the cathedral’s “watcher,” maintains its belfry and fulfills daily routines that he believes help to keep the cathedral a sanctuary to lost angels. One of those angels, to his mind, is beautiful American expatriate Katherine Taylor, who through her work as a highly paid escort has recently run afoul of vicious Russian criminals. Meanwhile, Jay Harper, an amnesiac operative for the International Olympic Committee who’s been investigating a former Olympian’s bizarre death, comes across the Book of Enoch, an apocryphal book of the Bible concerned with fallen angels who intermingled with humanity. Steele (War Junkie) 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 the uncanny in their fiction. Agent: Georgina Capel, Capel & Land Ltd.

June 15, 2012
If Quasimodo had a love child with Holly Golightly, well, readers of this unchallenging but not unpleasant thriller wouldn't be a bit surprised. Debut novelist and former ITV cameraman/reporter Steele (War Junkie, 2002, etc.), a longtime resident of Switzerland, conjures a promising setup in which the oddball bell-ringer (in literature, there can be no other kind) of the Lausanne cathedral crosses paths with the superhot, superhigh-priced call girl who just happens to live across the street. Lon Chaney Jr. our ringer isn't, not really, though young Marc Rochat knows everything that happens in, around and below his haunt. Katherine Taylor is no Esmeralda, either, though she has some of that gypsy's soft touch. Enter third-wheel Jay Harper, a British Private Investigator who's just arrived in Lausanne because people have been turning up dead all around the church, while strange noises have been coming from the basement. By some lights, that's all to the good; says a friendly cafe keeper to Marc, "Surprise me sometime. This is Switzerland. We need surprises now and then. Keeps us from boring one another to death." Well, one surprise is that Jay suffers from amnesia--but then, what detective hero doesn't have a personal flaw to overcome? Another is that the efficient Swiss are inefficient killing machines compared to the fallen angels, halflings, monsters and other weirdos that turn up to duke it out, with the forces of good facing down the forces of evil and all that and sometimes not doing too good a job of it. Steele would seem to do a lot of borrowing here, particularly from the movies; some of the scenes echo the creepily apocalyptic 1995 film The Prophecy, while it's probably not an accident that one of baddest of the bad guys shares a name with the baddest of the bad guys in the classic film Doctor Zhivago. And then the whole confection falls into territory somewhere between Stephen King (good) and Dan Brown (not good). Still, there's plenty of diabolical fun to be had here, with "I see dead people" happily rejoined by "But I wouldn't call her dead, not really."

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January 1, 2012

Corpses bearing the marks of torture are showing up around Lausanne Cathedral, where an innocent named Marc Rochat serves as le guet--the man who rings out the hour from the church's belfry. In this mystical noir-thriller (as the publisher calls it), angels tumbled from heaven may be causing the trouble. A first novel from Steele, for years a master cameraman for Independent Television News and author of War Junkie; good for smart thriller readers.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2012
As an award-winning news cameraman, Steele covered wars all around the world. Here he uses his keen eye for telling detail, action, valor, and evil in a commodious and seductive cosmic thriller stoked by historic fact, an ancient Jewish religious text, and a literary classic. Marc Rochat is small, misshapen, and seemingly mentally impaired, yet he is more savant than simpleton as he deftly navigates the belfry of the majestic and mysterious gothic Lausanne Cathedral, tends to the moody bells, draws beautifully, and serves as night watchman, calling out the hours as others have before him since 1275. Marc is Steele's endearing Swiss variation on Quasimodo, and he, too, risks all to rescue a damsel in distress, namely Katherine, a high-class American call girl who's rich and happyuntil she is paired with a spooky, sinister client. Also on the scene is Harper, a boozy British private eye who can't remember anything about his past. Steele slowly infuses the oddly charming plot with dark mysticism as Harper's quest leads him to the ancient book of Enoch, and malevolent forces yield gruesome murders and diabolical battles. 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)