Review: Want to Play?

Want to Play? by P.J. Tracy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Price was ok, I waited for long time for it to sink further, it did not, and I finally caved today and bought it, after reading the blurb / praise from unknown authors who best are forgotten ... . At least it is about a serial killer, so I hope for good entertainment.

At 73% I guessed the killer, and I was mostly right.
A few nice twists, but not in the beginning up to maybe 30-40% way to many important people playing a role, and even with some nice surprises not enough suspense for me, I am not so good with names, so I had trouble remembering who was what where with the 2 crime-scenes and two sets of cops.

Nice, bloody ending, with a surprising body count.
A little romance, no real sex scenes, straying into LGBT with the gender of the killer.

As this book was about a computer-game-constructing firm and computers, networks, firewalls etc. played a certain role, as a retired IT-Helpdesk-Slave I would have liked a more technical jargon and more details, for the layperson that could have been explained after the book in an X-ray (Kindle) or Glossary (even for a few expressions or words, I would have liked a Glossary). At one point near the end when the power was down it was asked how long the computers ran on battery, so they had implied UPS (uninterruptible power supply) connected, but given that they also had a generator for such a power failure, that could and should have been mentioned. The technology as mentioned was correct, but mostly because it was never very detailed, just the general terms (Firewall, hacking etc).

This was published a few years before the iPhone (or smartphones in general), but that is not too obvious, and I guess the phones at that time had no light. Today and even 2 or 3 years back you would just have switched on your phone for lack of a flashlight.

For a first in the series good enough to make me want to read the next book in the series, but not too soon. So a solid 4 stars it is, recommended.

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