re:mote voices

Title: Want To Play?
Author: P.J. Tracy
Publisher:Penguin

Want To Play? is the first novel by P.J. Tracy, with the second novel Live Bait having recently been released in hardback. Want To Play? catches the eye with the cover sprawling title as blood tinted declaration, and from there it was picked up for some strong promotion, including TV review. From which it sounded like it was a crime novel with some promise, like most of my choices in the genre having a certain technological influence.

In this case, the book starts with two sets of murders in two different parts of America, which appear to use the same murder weapon, and as the book progresses the two police departments stumble upon each other. The first murder is almost incidental, despite how it fits into the picture, rather it is the series of murders that grabs media attention. Especially when it comes out that each of these murders mirrors one in a serial killer computer game, which is under development. The promotion for the game is being done via the company Monkey Wrench's website - which means there are hundreds of potential suspects - or it could be one of the five people who work for the company.

The book is propelled in a couple of ways. The first is the knowledge that the game contains 22 murders, with no one having legitimately got past the seventh on the website - so with each new murder there is a desperate scramble to match scene, victim and game clues to reality and see if they can stop the killing and trap the killer. The second is the mystery surrounding the double lives of the game developers, who according to all records did not exist ten years ago. As suspects and possible targets the police want to know who the Monkey Wrench people are, as people with something to hide the Monkey Wrench people would prefer that didn't happen.

The book tries to keep you guessing and keeps shifting back and forth, but in the end, for me at least, certain suspicions start to creep in, and with that there isn't particularly a surprise with the ending. However Want To Play? is reasonably well written and a decent enough read. One perhaps gets an impression of this being written in a way that could work as a film, and given that P.J. Tracy is actually a mother and daughter team, with the mother married to a screenwriter this perhaps isn't surprising.