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P. J. Tracy first came on the scene with the tightly plotted serial killer novel MONKEEWRENCH. Tracy's sophomore effort, LIVE BAIT, although not as innovative as the first novel in the series, marked Tracy as an author to watch. Now, with DEAD RUN, Tracy offers a straight-up (but never straightforward) thriller that should propel this mother-daughter writing team into the company of the very best mystery and thriller writers.
As with the earlier novels in this loosely connected series, DEAD RUN's story alternates between Minneapolis and small-town Wisconsin. The software developers known as the Monkeewrench team have volunteered their sophisticated computer programs and their considerable expertise to help police departments solve related crimes. When Sharon Mueller, a Wisconsin police deputy now working for the FBI in Minneapolis, asks Grace MacBride and Annie Belinsky of the Monkeewrench team to help her connect the dots in a series of Green Bay murders, the three women set off on a road trip through rural Wisconsin.
Along the way, they find the grisly remnants of a mysterious event: an abandoned town, a quasi-military blockade, and a farm field filled with unspeakable horrors. Is this some kind of secret government experiment? Or is it the beginning of a new kind of war? Drawn into the mystery against their will, the three women soon find themselves actively involved not only in saving themselves, but also in preventing the potential deaths of thousands of other people.
In the meantime, terrified by the women's disappearance, the rest of the Monkeewrench crew and law enforcement agencies in two states mobilize to find the three women before it's too late. For some, such as Detective Leo Magozzi, the motivation is as much about their personal desires as it is about professional concerns: "We're not on the job. What we really are is a couple of frantic guys chasing a couple of skirts. Saving our women. Caveman stuff." Little do these frantic guys know, though, that their women are more than capable of taking care of business, sometimes surprising even themselves.
If this fast-paced, breathlessly plotted thriller has a fault, it is that it depends too much on a reader's knowledge of the earlier books in the series to fully understand and appreciate the nuances of character development and relationships explored in this third volume. Don't view this as a weakness, though; instead, use it as an excuse to pick up all three volumes in this thrilling series.
--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl
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