Search - Dead Run (Monkeewrench, Bk 3)

Great book with an interesting, scary premise. I could barely put it down. I'm glad I discovered the mother-daughter team of PJ Tracy. You will want to start with Monkeewrench, the first in the series, and read them all in order (Dead Run is the 3rd. There are 4 books in the series with a new one due sometime this year - 2009).

I absolutely loved this book. It sparked the imagination and I was living what was happening to them, I could see it in my mind so vividly. I have had this book for a while and kept putting off reading it. Shame on me. I've now ordered the rest of the books in the series and I hope I enjoy them as much.

Oh wow! I can see why this is the favorite book of the series for most, as it's fantastic! The Monkeewrench team are back in a doozy of a thriller. Grace McBride and Annie Belinsky are traveling to Green Bay, Wisconsin with deputy Sharon Mueller to assist locals with finding a serial killer using their new software. They get lost on the way and stumble onto the mysteriously empty town of Four Corners, where they unwittingly witness the brutal murders of two civilians by military men. They need to get out to tell someone but the whole town is surrounded and they are being hunted.

Meanwhile Detectives Leo Magozzi and his partner team up with Sheriff Halloran and the rest of the Monkeewrench team to try to find the women. When more people turn up missing in the same area and the Feds keep everyone, including local law enforcement, away without telling them why, they suspect something bigger than unsolved murders and missing persons is up. But they have no idea HOW big...

It was great to have the Monkeewrench team back in the thick of things instead of on the periphery, and this novel starts with a bang and doesn't let the tension up as it races through to its nerve-wracking climax. Fantastic premise brilliantly executed - I don't see how they can top this one but I sure hope they keep trying!

This series continues to suprise me. Except for some occasional dialogue that seems to work a bit hard at being funny, the books just get better and better. Don't get me wrong. It does have humor and usually it's very natural but sometimes just a little awkward. That criticism is outweighed however, by the original plotting, superb writing and generally tight and realistic dialogue. Very hard to put down.

Here's one section, from the p.o.v. of an 8 year old: "He was straddling his old bike across the street from the cafe, staring through the plate-glass window, watching Hazel's broad back hunch and move over the grill plate behind the counter. Even through the dust-streaked window, he could see that great pile of too-black hair wobbling on top of her head, and when she turned aournd to plop a plate down on the counter in front of a customer, he saw the loose skin of remembered chins cascading down over the place where her neck was supposed to be." Writing just doesn't get much more vivid than that. :)