Rating: 
Summary: Want to play?...Yes please
Review: Two sets of murders, seemingly unconnected; two sets of cops, small-town and inner-city; a suspicious group of misfits, authors of the copycat killer's blueprint; and a whole bag of twists in the tale. Published as 'Want to Play?' by Penguin in the UK, Monkeewrench introduces PJ Tracy to the thriller genre in a blaze of glory. With her first novel, Tracy earns all sorts of awful cliches like "pageturner" and "unputdownable". (It is).The characters are sympathetic, from cops to victim/suspects, and actually have personalities, none of them from the thrillerwriters' identikit book - there's not a divorced, slighty maverick, recovering alcoholic in sight. The plots have punch and intrigue, the pace is steady, the twists and subplots assured. The descriptions are witty, seductive and prosaic without being self-conscious, gratuitous or flowery. This is a bloody good debut book and PJ Tracy undoubtedly has much more to show us. Can't wait for her next game.
Rating: 
Summary: A Computer Game Becomes a Blueprint for Murder
Review: This terrific first novel is set in Minneapolis and rural Wisconsin, where the police are grappling with a series of murders. In Minneapolis, the two lead detectives on the case, Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth, are working round the clock to find a serial murderer before he strikes again. Very early on, they find that the murders are based on a computer game being developed by a local software company called Monkeewrench. The murderer is playing out a series of twenty murders, exactly as they are depicted in the computer clue-finding game. The five team members of the Monkeewrench gang quickly find themselves as the prime suspects in the murder. The Wisconsin murder of an elderly couple in the local Catholic church at first is baffling, until the sheriff finds a clue that possibly relates this murder to the ones in Minneapolis.
This book was tightly plotted, and the story was extremely suspenseful. It's the kind of book that you just can't put down. The ending was amazing, and I certainly guessed wrong about the identity of the murderer. I can't wait to read "Live Bait", the second thriller from this mother-daughter writing team.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Review: When I first heard about Monkeewrench (published as Want to Play? in England, which is the edition I have) I thought it sounded a lot like John Sandford's Prey series...a serial killer in Minneapolis, a games designer protagonist...but the resemblance is superficial. As you get into the story, you realize that Monkeewrench is more of a whodunit, which I loved. I figured the ending wrong, but when I got to the last page, I realized how well it had been set up.
The only comparison to Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series is that Monkeewrench has its laugh out loud moments; unlike Evanovich, Tracy's humor is dialogue driven, not situational.
This is definitely one worth buying!
Rating:
Summary: Riveting; couldn't put it down
Review: This is the best thriller I have read in years. The plot was very intriguing - copycat murders based on a computer game - and it even made me nervous something like that could happen today. The main characters were likable and computer-geeky but in humorous and colorful ways. I thought the book moved quickly and it was very difficult to put it down at the end. The authors are a very talented mother/daughter team, but they clearly know how to do "guy talk" because the banter between the police officers and detectives was hilarious and by far my favorite part. It was a great combination of humor and suspense. I'm picking up their next book today.
Rating:
Summary: Murders based on a computer game
Review: The premise of this book is interesting. A team of computer game developers create a game that allows players to solve a series of murders. As they are about to release the game, someone begins committing identical murders in real life.
The police in Minneapolis investigate. They race against time trying to solve the mystery before more killings can occur. Meanwhile police in Wisconsin examine "unrelated" killings in rural Wisconsin.
I really enjoyed the unraveling of the plot as the police put the pieces together to figure out the mystery. I liked the characters, although they were somewhat stereotyped. The programmers are eccentric, the art lovers are pretentious, the local police are good, and the FBI agents are bad.
I was somewhat disappointed with the ending. It would only happen like that in a mystery book; not in real life. If it were really that easy to become a serial killer, there would be more of them around.
I look forward to the next book by these two. I hope the story is as good and the ending is a little better.
I also enjoyed reading a story about Minneapolis, since I live in the Twin Cities myself. It was interesting to read about places I have seen. I also noticed one thing that was missing; if the story had been written this year, the police may have had to wait for the light rail when driving through downtown.
Rating:
Summary: Monkeewrench
Review: This was an amazing first book!!! It had all the 'write' elements for the genre. I look forward to reading their next book!!
Rating:
Summary: Smart thriller for the gamer crowd
Review: It's a rare thing indeed when a new author truly excited me. P.J. Tracy's debut thriller Monkeewrench is cause for celebration: finally the new generation has brought solid storytelling into the modern age. But where most so-called "technothrillers" rely on obscure terminology and silly leaps of faith to retain the reader's interest, Monkeewrench merely uses its computer knowledge as a starting point for a serial murder mystery firmly grounded in the dark reality of the police procedural.
The folks at software company Monkeewrench are on the verge of releasing their new game Serial Killer Detective when two murders are committed that are identical to the first two in the game. When this is brought to the attention of the local police force, the programmers become prime suspects even though over 500 people had downloaded beta versions of Serial Killer Detective that included the first seven kills.
More suspicious is the fact that the programmers seem to have not existed before 1994. the connection between these new murders and this mysterious past adds further depth to the investigations. Especially when two seeming unrelated murders happen in another region.
Monkeewrench is that rarity: a serial killer thriller with a sensitive side. This is likely due to the pseudonymous mother-daughter pairing of authors P.J. and Traci Langbrecht. Not only do they deliver a fast-paced, nicely complicated plotline with plenty of death to keep mystery fans salivating, but they also concentrate on the feelings of the characters and how these murders affect their fragile lives. This extra layer turns Monkeewrench from a run-of-the-mill thriller into a book that makes P.J. Tracy, pseudonym or not, an author (or authors) to watch.
Rating:
Summary: Bravo!! What a fantastic first effort!
Review: I have to say I was intrigued when I read the synopsis of this novel in a BMC magazine and quickly added it to my must read list. I sure am glad I did. This book had everything one could possibly want in a story, drama, mystery, humor, plot turns and twists, characters rich in personality, and a great story line. The book is sooooo well written! It was a sheer delight to read.
The suspense was wonderful and just when I thought I knew who did it...surprise! This happened a couple times. If this is their first effort, I can't wait to see what is to come. Hopefully they won't change their writing style. More authors need to take notice. The story flowed almost like watching a movie, and it was over so quickly. Speaking of movie, this story would make a great movie. I just can't seem to say enough about it. Do yourself a favor and give this book a try. I can't imagine you would regret it.
Rating:
Summary: A new author for the favorite list.
Review: For the book as a whole, 6 stars; for the denouement, 3 stars; for the characters, OUTSTANDING. The interplay between, and among, the characters reminded me of John McDonald's McGee and Meyer, the 87th Precinct, and Georgette Heyer's delightful mysteries, all rolled into one book, if that is possible. I cannot imagine a second plot that would include the Wisonsin police, the Minneapolis police, and the Monkeewrench gang (and Charlie), but I will hope to meet everyone again -- and again -- and again. Also, as a native of Southern California and a resident of Florida, I almost got hypothermia reading about the cold weather.
Rating:
Summary: Realistic Crime From Mother-And-Daughter Writing Team
Review: An elderly couple are found executed in a small-town Wisconsin church. Hundreds of kilometres away, in the next state, someone has begun mimicking the deaths from a new computer game, Serial Killer Detective. A cop dies. Love blooms in unexpected corners. And the past catches up with an oddball group of IT designers, who have been friends since college.
P J Tracy has knocked together a fantastic debut, that keeps you involved - and guessing - for all of its four-hundred-odd pages, deftly stringing two separate police investigations along side-by-side, with a minimum of extraneous characters, a real flair for natural dialogue, and twin casts of middle American types that you can actually care about. I had finished reading Want To Play? before I discovered that P J Tracy is in fact the penname for a mother and daughter writing team, (P.J. and Traci Lambrecht) - perhaps that is why the characterisation and conversation is so good.
With twin criminal investigations appearing to close in on the mismatched gang at Monkeewrench Software Development, and the FBI also showing an intense, but unidentified, interest, the clues are few and far between, with just a couple of late, (and miniscule), red herrings thrown in to cloud the reader's suspicions. The Monkeewrench crew - Grace, Harley, Roadrunner, big Annie and Mitch - make for a mostly likeable bunch, as do the two police outfits - Sheriff Micahel Halloran and his colleagues in rural Wisconsin, and Detective Leo Magozzi and crew on the trail of the computer game murderer in Minneapolis.
A cemetery, a Mississippi riverboat, a New York Catholic boarding school, a university in Atlanta, a shopping mall - locations past and present are every bit as diverse as the characters, and the end result is a most satisfactory read. Grace, the Monkeewrench developer responsible for the Serial Killer Detective game, has serious issues in her past, which take some time to be identified, while one of her colleagues readily admits to a past killing, and both developments are handled with what at first appears to be almost criminal disregard by some of the detectives, but is probably closer to the realities of modern police-work.
Leo Magozzi and his sidekick, Gino Rolseth, along with Grace MacBride, reappear in Live Bait, (May, 2004), the second of what promises to be a riveting series. (The title may change for overseas publication - Monkeewrench was released outside the US as Want To Play?)
|
