Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you go down to the woods today..., 15 May 2006
... be ready for another classy, entertaining thriller from mother-daughter writing team PJ Tracy. Beware, this book is seriously enthralling and had me up until the small hours of the morning with my nerves in shreds!
Dead Run is a follow up to the novels Want To Play? and Live Bait, both excellent themselves, and doesn't disappoint. It is vital to read those two before you start Dead Run or you'll be completely at a loss as to how the characters are connected and how their experiences have shaped them. Grace, Annie and Sharon are on a road trip across Wisconsin when their Range Rover breaks down just a short trip from the sleepy town of Four Corners, where a terrible and shocking tragedy has just occurred. When the women reach the town and witness a violent double murder, they soon realise something is very wrong, and spend a fearful night on the run from psycho soldiers with automatic rifles and twitchy fingers. Meanwhile, their police comrades are trying to track them down, unaware of how much danger they are truly in.
The writing is excellent throughout and is so vivid that at times you'll be checking over your shoulder. It's amazing a book with two authors can seem so smooth and well connected. The dramatic irony is thick and fast and the women make some truly grim discoveries in their desperate struggle to remain hidden and survive among the eerie abandoned town and silent houses. Another reviewer perceived the writing style as basic, but in reality, it's used to create desperation and fear- the author herself urges the characters to run, or remain silent etc, and it lends a very creepy atmosphere to the story.
A wicked read, with the only disappointment being the lack of a good confrontation between the women and the Colonel himself, but there's more than enough to keep you guessing and jumping in this stylish read.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Huge build-up, feeble ending, 19 April 2006
Patricia and Traci are at it again with their Monkeewrench characters, first (and best) seen in Want to Play? and followed up with Live Bait. I’m led to understand that they plan to write five novels in all in this series, but they had better come up with some better ideas and execution than this one, otherwise they might not make it to number four. The central theme of Dead Run is the release of large quantities of Sarin nerve gas by right-wing extremists – a topic I have more than a passing interest in since I was on an adjacent subway train on my way to work in Tokyo in March 1995 at the exact time of the Aum Shinrikyo attack who used the very same chemical on the subway and killed some 13 commuters.
If I had composed this review at the half-way stage of the book I would have mentioned how much I was enjoying it, because the build-up was created expertly, thoroughly and suspensefully. I was expecting this to be their best work yet – but I was ultimately left with the impression that the writers had devoted months and months to the story escalation and, when they found themselves with nothing to do one boring Tuesday afternoon, they wrote The End. What an anti-climax! This was a storyline that was at least topical and potentially riveting but culminated in an ending that, in effect, was covered in three words : “We did it”. And by that, I mean the pressing of a few keys on a PC keyboard – hardly a suitable counterpoint to an expansive plot line which covered large-scale terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, thousands of potential fatalities and basically an event to up-scale 9/11. Imagine, if you will, those various jets flying towards their destinations when, moments before impact, some geek hundreds of miles away hits the ‘Enter’ key and the aircraft suddenly return to their original flight-paths and everyone lives happily ever after. If Dead Run were to be made into a film, I don’t expect it would be directed by Jerry Buckheimer.
Since there are some specific, if tongue-in-cheek, observations in the story about how differently women handle a crisis compared to men (guess who gets the vote!) it raises the question of the gender of author best suited to compose a novel built around bombs, guns and WMD. Remember, I didn’t raise this sexist issue – the authors did, so they stand to be counted in this regard. In the meantime we can only hope that we will one day defeat Al Qaeda using an X-Box 360……who knows, maybe to some in distant lands that might sound like a weapon of mass destruction
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20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Tracy flatters to deceive, 31 May 2005
By A Customer
Like many I eagerly anticipated the release of this 'third in the series of five' books based around the Monkeewrench crew. I have to be honest and say that I was left a little disappointed. Whilst the story starts well and reintroduces all characters from the first book (Want to Play), it falls down in the middle, becoming slightly unbelievable and far-fetched. The ending too is something of an anti-climax. I was left with many unanswered questions and a feeling that the story had been wrapped up far too quickly. On the positive side it is held together by intelligent prose and the interaction of the characters, but the overall story is sadly lacking. This is a good book in its own right, but for those that have become addicted to the suspense and mystery created in the first novel (and to a lesser extent, the second novel) it's not quite there. An enjoyable read, but not a patch on Want to Play.
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