Pun Salad

Number three in P. J. Tracy's Monkeewrench series, which my sister recommended. Summary: I didn't like it as much as the first two.

It's clear from Chapter One that something nasty is going on in the remote village of Four Corners, Wisconsin. A milk truck overturns because of careless driving on a bumpy road, and… hey, wait a minute, that's not milk at all!

Also, down the road a bit (sorry, my Wisconsin geography is weak), a kid diving to retrieve his beer in an abandoned quarry is startled to find… eek, corpses!

Into all this drops three women: Grace and Annie from the Monkeewrench software company, and Sharon, a cop from the first book, now an FBI agent. They're on their way to Green Bay, but have taken a detour to view an unspecified attraction. (Spoiler: this.) But their car breaks down, they need to walk for help, they witness brutal murders, they get chased by the same guys,…

It's an interesting departure from the first two books in the series, which were murder mysteries, a tad gimmicky, but that's OK. This one is more like Lee Child, a massive conspiracy threatening the lives of thousands. (But also gimmicky, because the pulse-pounding climax depends mightily on the sheer coincidence of genius hackers just happening to be in the area when needed.)

The writing style seems to have taken a turn for the worse here, too, with pointless floweriness cropping up throughout, when you just want to say "get on with it already." But I'll keep reading the series.