The Monkey House

by John Fullerton Narrated by J. Charles

Overview

People are dying for the new computer game by the software company Monkeewrench. Literally. With Serial Killer Detective out in limited release, the real-life murders of a jogger and a young woman have already mimicked the first two scenarios in the game.

But Grace McBride and her eccentric Monkeewrench partners are caught in a vise. If they tell the Minneapolis police of the link between their game and the murders, they'll shine a spotlight on the past they thought they had erased-and the horror they thought they'd left behind. If they don't, eighteen more people will die...

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Wartorn Sarajevo provides the setting for this gripping, atmospheric thriller in the tradition of le Carr and Cruz Smith's Gorky Park. Police superintendent Rosso, a Croat and Sarajevo's "top cop," returns home from Zagreb to learn of a recent murder his ill-equipped, understaffed detective squad hasn't even bothered to investigate: of a Serbian dentistand sometime police informantfound dead in her bathtub. Luka, a dangerous warlord and black marketeer, is Rosso's top suspect, but Rosso's authority is mostly a memory of peacetime, while Luka's troops are active throughout the city. Nor can Rosso expect much help from the citizenrywhat is one more murder in a city engulfed by violence and death? Rosso's Serbian wife suggests he drop the matter as she hides in a haze of alcoholism and fear. Their Muslim goddaughter, Tanjawho may be having an affair with Lukaalso urges caution. But Rosso must stand against this rampant amorality, for very personal reasons, for his family and for his homeland. Fullerton, a Reuters reporter, steers clear of trying to explain the Bosnian conflict. Instead, he brings it to life through the hardships and dangers his characters accept as daily routinejust as, in this engaging and timely first novel, he dramatizes personal relationships every bit as thorny as the politics that have ravaged a once beautiful land. Author tour. (Aug.)

Library Journal

In a fiction debut touted as the first thriller about the war in Bosnia, journalist Fullerton introduces Sarajevo Police Superintendant Russo, a Croat investigating the death of a Serb informant as the city explodes around him.

Kirkus Reviews

An impressive if bleak first novel from Reuters correspondent Fullerton, whose protagonist is an existential detective under fire from all quarters during the early winter of 1993 in war-torn Sarajevo.

Tipped off that one of his department's informants has been killed, Police Superintendent Rosso braves the perilous streets of a city under siege to find the young woman's mutilated corpse in a largely unscathed apartment building known as The Monkey House. Although the Bosnian capital is still controlled by Croats, Serb snipers and artillerymen in the heights above the city have made it a living hell for what's left of the cold, hungry, and shell- shocked populace; municipal services are a memory; there's neither law nor order anywhere. Despite the odds against him, Rosso (a Croat with a sense of duty made the keener by remembrances of a long-dead father who was a Nazi collaborator) is grimly bent on solving the brutal murder. Although warned off by his beloved goddaughter Tanja, who's keeping company with Luka, the head of a local crime syndicate, he stubbornly persists. With a little help from Branston Flett, an American journalist who views Sarajevo's ethnic strife as a career-advancement opportunity, and with 11th- hour assistance from his political masters, Rosso gathers enough evidence to arrest Luka and have his armed and dangerous subordinates drafted into front-line units beyond the urban Gehenna. Shortly after the hardcase dealer in contraband is taken into custody, however, the Serbs (whom he supplies with ordnance) abduct Flett, precipitating a world-class flap in Western chancelleries and in the UN's peacekeeping command. In order to recover the kidnapped reporter, Rosso is invited to make what could prove an ultimate sacrifice. The honorable police officer's self- determined, if ambiguous, fate is of a piece with what has been revealed of his character over his four-day pursuit of justice.

A first-rate debut thriller, with harrowing detail showing the limits of a memorable man and his ruined city.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169582635
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	03/14/2008
Edition description:	Unabridged

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