PLAY TO KILL

TITLE: PLAY TO KILL
AUTHOR: P.J. TRACY
Pages: 325
Date: 23/05/2010
Grade: 4+
Details: no. 5 Monkeywrench
            Published in the US as Shoot to Thrill
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It has been four long years since the last Monkeywrench thriller, and this was a very welcome return to the world of the computer hackers extra-ordinair and Minneapolis cops Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth.
Murder videos are turning up on the Internet, depicting real murders. Those posting the videos are untraceable through legal means.Desperate to stop the murders the FBI turn to computer hackers to trace the origins of the videos.
And so begins an, at first very uncomfortable, co-operation between grace McBride and three colleagues and John Smit, an FBI agent nearing his retirement.
When one of the online murders takes  place in Minneapolis, Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth get involved in what appears to be an unsolvable crime spree as well.
These books by P.J. Tracy are always thrilling and easy to read. I enjoy going back to these characters with their quirks, and the pages in these books almost turn themselves.
However, this book does have one or two issues; there is at least one story-line too many in this book and the solution to the crime failed to convince me. I can't say more about those issues though without spoiling the book for others, so I won't.
And I'm not sure I approve of the ending of this book. I'll have to see where the P.J. Tracy team goes with that before I make up my mind on that point though.
I also have an issue with the title change this book underwent while crossing the Atlantic. I can't think of one good reason why this book couldn't be called "Shoot to Thrill" over here as well. However, on the upside, the first book in this series was called "Want to Play" when published in the UK and that gave the publishers the opportunity to give this book the subtitle "Want to Play Again?" A subtitle the American version probably doesn't have.
In short, this is an enjoyable, but not flawless, thriller.