Hacker P.I. JAMES PRYCE could give Lisbeth Salander a run for her money when it comes to digital snooping -- and other nasty habits.

He's a Harvard dropout employed by RedRook Security out of the Big Apple whose gig is to track down people who don't necessarily want to be tracked down, following their cyber-trails wherever they may lead, sniffing out hidden assets, flushing them out and -- when called upon -- laying some inventive high-tech whup-ass upon them.

His impressively hopped-up debut, Strange Flesh (2012), skates the line between reality and a virtual surreality (is that a word?). Booklist tags it as "compelling cyberpunk, filled with plausible cyberwizardry, clever wordplay, murder, betrayal, and heaping helpings of gamer culture and kinky cybersex."is compelling cyberpunk, filled with plausible cyberwiza

The author attended Harvard himself, but unlike his fictional hero, he actually graduated, and worked in investment banking and software engineering before taking a master's degree from NYU's Interactive Technology Program, where he designed a locomotion interface for virtual environments. Now he writes. Very well.

• "Readers can choose their poison in this richly composed slab of transgressive fiction by debut novelist Olson: say, a healthy measure of Neal Stephenson crossed with a slice of Warren Ellis with a serious splash of Nicholson Baker's sex novels. Crossing the barrier between sex, games and virtual reality, the book is likely to be the only Marquis de Sade-influenced thriller this year. . . . For readers with a penchant for this volatile mix of sex, violence and technology, the payoff is rich indeed."
  -- Kirkus Reviews

• Strange Flesh (2012).. Buy this book. Kindle it!