My Weekly Book

Livebait by PJ Tracy

This is, in a very real sense, a book of two halves. It’s the second by the authors, mother and daughter team PJ and Tracy Lambrecht, who launched their literary career with the superb psychological thriller Want To Play. It’s in my hands as the result of a random moment of madness in Borders a very long time ago. When various of my friends and relatives heard I was planning to read it they snatched it away, put it under lock and key and said “DON’T touch that until you’ve read the first one.” My good friend Gerri Parker very kindly posted her copy down from the Frozen North for me to read. And it was impossible to put the thing down. Want to Play is an extremely accomplished novel that flawlessly weaves together two seemingly-unconnected strands of a story which then collide for a thrilling and suspenseful conclusion. The premise is shocking and original and contains the mother of all twists followed by its own grandmother. After this I had extremely high hopes for the sequel.

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Hopes that were initially disappointed. Book two gets off to a slow start with entirely familiar characters that, I felt, didn’t really develop and were relying rather too heavily on the fact that we’d made their acquaintance on a previous occasion. There’s plenty of witty, snappy dialogue but not all that much action and an extremely linear plot for the first couple of hundred pages. A good half to two thirds of the ensemble cast of the first novel is missing. Although the premise – of a serial killer who is going around picking off the elderly citizens of Minneapolis during an unseasonable heatwave – is promising it simply doesn’t catch fire.

But after that it’s gripping. Once the full complexities of the plot start to unravel it is evident that PJ and Tracy have, as before, managed to unerringly put their finger on one of the many plot elements that I find gripping in a thriller. They do it in their third one too – but more on that later. As the characters are propelled towards the denouement the book regains the compulsive, racing pace of its predecessor – and in the best tradition of thrillers and police procedurals everywhere the killer turns out to have been on-camera since the very start. The action keeps going to the very end with only the briefest dip into soppy romance – brief enough for even grumpy old me not to be too put out by it. I got to the end, let out a long breath and immediately picked up the sequel.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 28th, 2006 at 1:15 AM and is filed under 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.