About the Book
There’s a search for a missing girl, and another for a serial killer: death holds all the cards . . .
When Marla Gustafson vanishes on her way to her father’s farm, her car left empty on the side of an isolated country road, even Grace MacBride and her eccentric team of analysts are baffled.
Meanwhile in Minneapolis, homicide detectives Gino and Magozzi have a serial killer on their hands – two women murdered in cruelly similar fashion, with playing cards left on the bodies. But one card is an ace, the other is a four – it seems the killer is already two murders ahead.
With both teams stumped, it slowly becomes clear the evidence is inexplicably entangled. And they have little time to unravel the threads: a twisted killer is intent on playing out the deck…
My Review
The Monkeewrench series is one that I followed in its early years and I was quite surprised when I saw how many books had now been published. I have only read a couple, so now I can add the books I’ve not read to all the other series’ I want to catch up on. Even though I was familiar with a couple of the characters, I really read this as a standalone novel without any problems with missing any back story.
Initially both teams are working different cases, but as the body count rises Gino and Magozzi realise that they are linked. They make contact with Grace and the others and head straight into a different type of danger on their way to join them. A tornado.
I’ve never a read series before where two different types of investigators have equal coverage in a novel. Whilst Monkeewrench dealt with technology they left the detecting to the police and they worked well together with a mutual respect. It looked like an established formula that was easy and interesting to read.
The main characters had strong personalities and all were believable. There were hang ups from some, and a few unexplained issues but I’m sure I will get to know them all very well when I read the earlier books. Both Annie and Roadrunner especially were very intriguing. Walt was a character that I adored. He is not a regular character, it is his daughter who has gone missing. Marla is all he has left in the world after his wife and son died a few years earlier. I was hoping that they could bring her home and he could get some happiness again. He coped beautifully with the arrival of Monkeewrench, many of who were a mixed bag of personalities. Probably nothing that a down to earth farmer had ever seen before.
The storyline concerning the tornado was just as intimidating as that of the killer. Living in the U.K we have no idea how powerful the weather can be in other parts of the world. The speed and the depth of the destruction left behind was frightening.
I am delighted that I have two books to giveaway today ( U.K. only) courtesy of the publishers Michael Joseph. I will pick two winners using a random number generator from blog shares and retweets of the pinned blog post on twitter. I will then pass the winners details on to Jenny Platt so she can send the books out. The competition will close at 12pm on Friday.
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