An old couple knelt side by side in an otherwise empty small town church - their heads resting on their hands in a picture of devotion. Both had small, tidy bullet holes in the backs of their skulls.

To local police their slaying looks like a one-off act of retribution.

At the same time, in Minneapolis, teams of detectives are scrambling to stop a sickeningly inventive serial killer striking again in a city paralysed by fear.

No one makes a connection.

But when the two separate investigations converge on an isolate Catholic boarding school, decades-old secrets begin to fall away. It seems an old killer has resurfaced. But one whose identity still remains dangerously out of reach.

Crackling dialogue, pace and rich, vivid characters all distinguish this electrifying debut thriller.

Make sure you've locked your door...

 
This book was part of Richard and Judy's summer book club list. I was pretty sceptical about their choices early on, as most of the books they'd picked weren't my cup of tea but when I saw the discussion about this one, a tense thriller with a killer twist, I thought I should check it out. I'm really looking forward to reading it, and seeing if it lives up to the hype.

 
September 1st 2004
The End

I wouldn't say this book was the piece of total genius that R&J made it out to be, but it was definitely an above average crime thriller with interesting use of language, and snappy dialogue.

The story revolves around Grace McBride, a paranoid computer games programmer who is part of the Monkeewrench design team. She, and her four partners, are stunned when a murder is staged exactly as one of the killings in their new serial killer game. Immediately they notify the police, and Detective Magozzi, and his partner Gino, investigate.

Meanwhile in small-town Wisconsin an elderly couple are brutally, and very personally, slain. Sheriff Michael Halloran and his Deputy Bonar Carlson try to put together a decades old mystery that will eventually lead them to Magozzi, and his investigation into Monkeewrench.

I very much enjoyed the parallels between Halloran and Magozzi and Gino and Bonar, even though at the start of the book I found the pairs too similar to really get a grip on either set of characters. My favourite moment in the book came when the four, with the addition of Sharon, another of Halloran's deputies, met together and bantered over the case. At that point the dialogue hit it's peak, and the story developed a new energy which carried through to the finale.

HUGE MAJOR EXTRAORDINARILY CRUCIAL SPOILERS AHEAD - DON'T READ ON CAUSE I'M ABOUT TO GIVE HUGE HINTS ABOUT THE ENDING!!!!!

If you're still reading I feel that I had couldn't really talk about this book without talking about the main problems of the book...they're coming now:

I very much liked Grace, and the relationships between her and her colleagues but Mitch was virtually ignored character-wise, which in retrospect is a lazy way of covering up the truth of his position. I also felt that having 'Brian Bradford' be a hermaphrodite was a pretty cheesy way of keeping suspicion alive for all the characters. It was interesting, but still cheesy.

Overall this was a very good, gripping thriller with some interesting ideas. For me, the thing that made this book special was the use of language, and the way the story was presented. The writing was excellent, and demonstrated great wit and humour which is rare in serious thrillers.

I don't think it's as good as R&J suggested it was, but I can only take from that that I've read lots of much better thrillers than they have. I will look forward to reading P. J. Tracy's next novel, as I think that there's a lot of scope for storytelling yet to come.