Friday, August 04, 2006

Mystery Book Review

Monkeewrench 2003
Live Bait 2004
Dead Run 2005
Snow Blind 2006
By P. J. Tracy

A quirky bunch of crime fighters, Grace McBride and her Monkeewrench Software Company help Minneapolis homicide detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth track serial killers and solve cold cases with the software the company has developed. Written by a mother-daughter team, the authors have come up with characters that make the novels crackle with humor and suspense.
The Monkeewrench Software Company employees:
Grace McBride: A gun is her fashion accessory
Ann Belinsky: Very large and very fashionably dressed
Harley Davidson: big, tattooed, and bearded
Roadrunner: stork- like with long legs and arms and six and a half feet tall.

For those who wonder how people can collaborate while writing fiction, check out frequently asked questions or FAQS on their website:
www.pjtracy.net

A mother-daughter writing team is fairly unusual - what is the writing process like? A: Since we've been writing together for over 15 years, we have the mechanics of our particular kind of collaboration pretty well nailed down. Picture a couple of great friends sitting at a kitchen table embellishing each other's wild stories, and you'll have a fairly good idea of how we do our plotting. We are both passionate about storytelling, and these sessions tend to be more performance art than conversation, complete with character voices, flailing gestures, hysterical ranting, and a lot of laughter. No one likes to watch us do this. It's ugly and annoying.

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