Product Description

They knew us before we began to walk upright. Shamans called them guardians, mythmakers called them tricksters, pagans called them gods, churchmen called them demons, folklorists called them shape-shifters. They’ve obligingly taken any role we’ve assigned them, and, while needing nothing from us, have accepted whatever we thought was their due – love, hate, fear, worship, condemnation, neglect, oblivion.
Even in modern times, when their existence is doubted or denied, they continue to extend invitations to those who would travel a different road, a road not found on any of our cultural maps. But now, perceiving us as a threat to life itself, they issue their invitations with a dark purpose of their own. In this dazzling metaphysical thriller, four who put themselves in the hands of these all-but-forgotten Others venture across a sinister American landscape hidden from normal view, finding their way to interlocking destinies of death, terror, transcendental rapture, and shattering enlightenment.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #126014 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-03
• Released on: 2006-01-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A detective goes demon hunting in this supernatural mystery from the bestselling author of Ishmael. Chicago sexagenarian private eye Howard Sheim is hired by millionaire Aaron Fischer to probe the existence of Baal, Ashtoroth and Moloch, "false gods" named in the Old Testament book of Exodus. The search leads him to a self-styled mystic who, after reading his future with tarot cards, refers Howard to a teenage seer, Richard Holloway. The boy tells him that there are those living among us-he calls them "yoo-hoos"-who are not really human, though he has no idea exactly what they are. After consulting a rabbi and a warlock, the skeptical Howard is about ready to throw in the towel and go back to his missing-person cases. The narrative switches to follow the quixotic odyssey of 42-year-old Midwesterner David Kennesey, who suddenly abandons his wife and 12-year-old son and heads west without a thought to his destination. Separately, his wife and son embark on their own quests to find him. After adventures in Chicago and Vegas, David stumbles into a mountain Shangri-La inhabited by a woman named Andrea and her coterie of oddball denizens. Back in Chicago, Howard-now with David's son-tracks David to Andrea's, where he finds out that the gods are alive and up to their old tricks. Quinn's playful metaphysical sleuthing and cast of chimerical figures are entertaining, but fans of Ishmael and After Dachau may feel that this book doesn't have quite the originality or moral weight of his earlier efforts.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Beginning with Ishmael (1992) and proceeding to After Dachau [BKL F 15 01], Quinn has used fiction to entice readers into questioning the increasingly destructive nature of Western civilization. In his sixth novel he wisely skips the bossy lectures that burden his earlier works and presents an electrifying, provocative, and dryly amusing thriller with cosmic dimensions. The quest begins when wealthy Chicagoan Aaron Fisher hires nearly retired private investigator Howard Schiem, an ex-boxer with the face to prove it, to undertake a very strange case: Aaron wants to know what became of Baal, Ashtaroth, and Moloch, the old gods whom the Old Testament castigates as false. Howard ends up having his Tarot cards read and helping young Tim from Indiana look for his father, who has inexplicably abandoned his orderly life and headed west. Howard and Tim follow suit, and the terrifying supernatural events that transpire on dark highways and rugged mountains, in neon-bright Las Vegas and a desert mansion, do indeed uncloak the old gods, and reveal the holy life force that blazes in everyday splendor right here on precious earth. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“Quinn presents an electrifying, provocative, and dryly amusing thriller with cosmic dimensions.” — Booklist

“The Holy should keep readers turning its pages long into the night, searching for answers.”—Rocky Mountain News

Customer Reviews

Deeper and Deeper...
"The Holy" is not to be taken at face value. To do so is to ruin the amazing opening to another "sight" that "The Holy" presents to us all.

There are much deeper issues and feelings running through this work of art than most will notice.

Take note, "The Holy" is not so much of a story in the similar vein as his first three famous books.
Yet it is....

I personally felt that "The Holy" was a wonderful experience and I treasure the time that I spent reading it.
I could spend all sorts of energy explaining every nuance of "The Holy" to you, but I won't.

If you want to open your being to yet another exciting and truthful story, read "The Holy"

Quinn is getting closer
Having read "After Dachau" the day before I read "The Holy", I was prepared to served up another rather bland, superficial novelization of some rather remarkable ideas. Imagine my surprise at having some rather remarkable ideas presented in a multi-dimensional, very engaging narrative. Everything is not laid out for the reader. Everything is not black and white, at least in the traditional sense. People get hurt. "Bad" things happen to not-at-fault individuals. Everything is not explained. Sorta like life.

Having become engaged with Quinn through the presentation of his ideas, I now have become engaged with his narratives. It is one thing to present ideas, quite another to have them brought to life by characters and narrative.

I think "layered" would be the best description. Quinn has proven many times that he has the ideas. He is well past the beginning stages of constructing narratives that have the potential to resonate as potent, "real-life" alternatives to readers. Ideas do not resonate.

If you are looking for another spoon-fed, single-layered demonstration of ideas, don't go here. Go back to Quinn's Ismael trilogy or "After Dachau". If you're looking for an amazing romp that you will have to sit down and properly chew, c'mon on board.

If we're especially fortunate, Quinn will continue to investigate the impregnation of a fine narrative with his ideas. A very fine issue, this one.

And watch out for those not-so-obvious ideas. There are a couple of loo-loos. Specifically pointed at the "searcher".

Kraye.

Hmmm . . .
Not one of Daniel Quinn's best works. Too much of a fairy tale quality.