Haunted by a series of horrifying and violent episodes in their past, Grace McBride and the oddball crew of her software company, Monkeewrench, create a computer game where the killer is always caught, where the good guys always win. But their game becomes a nightmare when someone starts duplicating the fictional murders in real life, down to the last detail. By the time the police realize what's happening, three people are dead, and with seventeen more murder scenarios available online, there are seventeen more potential victims. While the authorities scramble to find the killer in a city paralyzed by fear, the Monkeewrench staff are playing their own game, analyzing victim profiles in a frantic attempt to discover the murderer's next target. In a thriller populated by characters both hilarious and heartbreaking, a rural Wisconsin sheriff, two Minneapolis police detectives, and Grace's gang are caught in a web of decades-old secrets that could get them all killed. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

A mother-daughter writing team pens a soundly plotted thriller that fires on all cylinders. Tracy (the authors' pseudonym) seamlessly weaves together three distinct subplots converging on a Minneapolis software company, Monkeewrench, run by eclectic misfits and founded by the beautiful, bitchy, haunted Grace MacBride, an enigmatic recluse. The slaying of an elderly couple in a Wisconsin church draws Sheriff Michael Halloran and his amorous deputy, Sharon Mueller, into an investigation that brings unprecedented scrutiny to their conservative rural town. At the same time, a string of baffling murders in Minneapolis are driving homicide detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth bonkers. Then the folks at Monkeewrench figure out what's going on: a killer is staging a series of exotic murders that duplicate those in their grisly new video game, Serial Killer Detective. Desperate to prevent additional murders (the game has 20), the programmers study the victims to figure out who might be next. Meanwhile, Magozzi's investigation reveals that MacBride and her colleagues created entirely new identities for themselves years earlier, for reasons the FBI won't reveal, but which, Magozzi slowly finds, are connected to another series of murders a decade earlier in Atlanta. Tracy covers all the bases in this debut thriller: an accelerating, unpredictable plot that combines police procedural with techno-geek-speak, an array of well-drawn characters and, most importantly, witty repartee. Audio rights to Brilliance; foreign rights sold in France, Germany and the U.K. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Someone is playing with Grace and other employees of the software company Monkeewrench through a game they created, which is now horrifyingly replicated in real life with several murders. Can Grace find the murderer and shake off her own demons of the past? Set in rural Wisconsin and Minneapolis, P.J. Tracy's MONKEEWRENCH (Putnam. 2003. ISBN 0-399-14978-3. $23.95; pap. Signet. 2004. ISBN 0-451-21157-X. $6.99) is a satisfying debut thriller by a pseudonymous mother-daughter writing team. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

P.J. Tracy is the pseudonym of mother-daughter writing duo P.J. and Traci Lambrecht, winners of the Anthony, Barry, Gumshoe, and Minnesota Book Awards. Their first three novels, Monkeewrench, Live Bait and Dead Run, have become national and international bestsellers. Their most recent novel is entitled Shoot to Thrill.

(Bowker Author Biography) Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.