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: I understand all the hype
Review: When a debut mystery gets as much press and hooplah as Monkeewrench has received, I've just got to read it, but I read with some healthy skepticism. This book, however, deserves all the praise. A writing team of mother/daughter wrote it (how do they DO that??), basing the dense and riviting plot on a computer game that suddenly seems to be imitated in real life as people, based on characters in the game, keep turning up dead. The plot thickens (dum-de-dum-dum...) when we learn that one of the protagonists lives as a near recluse, surrounded by protective devices, due to having been threatened with murder years earlier - and the perp was never nabbed. And when it's discovered that the employees of the software company (the game's inventors) all have been given new IDs by the tight-lipped FBI, well, things get dicey. With 3-4 sub-plots unwinding, the book is a testament to the skill of the authors' ability to keep everything moving along with the skill and precision of a teenager with a joystick.
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!
| 
