The Guilty Dead

The Guilty Dead by P.J. Tracy
Monkeewrench #9
Mystery
2018 Crooked Lane
Finished on April 12, 2019
Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

Dead men tell no tales…but their pasts can’t keep a secret.

Gregory Norwood is Minnesota’s most beloved philanthropist, and the story of his son’s overdose was splashed across the front page of all the papers. When a photojournalist sets out to get a candid shot of the highly successful businessman on the one year anniversary of his son’s death, he’s shocked to find Norwood dead with a smoking gun in his hand.

The city is devastated, and Minneapolis detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth are called in to handle the delicate case. It should be open and shut, but something is not right. Norwood's death is no suicide.

With no suspects and an increasing tangle of digital evidence that confounds the Minneapolis Police Department’s most seasoned cops, Magozzi calls on Grace MacBride, Monkeewrench Software’s founder and chief computer genius and the soon to be mother of their child together. She and her motley crew of partners begin to unravel connections between Norwood’s death and an even larger plot. Norwood wasn’t the first, won’t be the last, and by the end, may be just one of many to die.

The breakneck, high stakes race to find his killer and save the lives of hundreds make P. J. Tracy's The Guilty Dead her most outstanding novel yet.

I first encountered this mother-daughter writing duo in 2003 (pre-blogging days), rapidly devouring the first three mysteries of their Monkeewrench series as quickly as they were published. I've since written about Snow Blind, Shoot to Thrill and Off the Grid, all of which I thoroughly enjoyed. When The Sixth Idea was released, I eagerly snatched a copy at my library and dove in as soon as I got home. I know there are many series in which one or two books fall short of their predecessors, but The Sixth Idea was a terrible disappointment. I've since learned that Patricia (Traci's mother) passed away in 2016 and was afraid this wonderful series would lose its magic. When I spotted The Guilty Dead on the New Release shelf at the library, I decided to give it a chance, thinking maybe the lackluster storyline of The Sixth Idea was simply an anomaly.

As with most of the books in this series, the mystery wasn't too terribly complicated or convoluted. There were a couple of clues, early on, that I picked up on and was able to figure out a few details about the case well before the detectives did. But as the case progressed and new evidence was revealed, Leo had that "ah ha!" moment of clarity, which not only helped with solving the case, but kicked the tension up several notches.

There were times when cases were solved slowly and methodically, with little fanfare; other times evidence and information coalesced into a burst of sudden revelation; but this was the first time in Magozzi's career that a slow-motion movie of the past twenty-four hours stuttered through his mind in blinding clarity until it reached a horrifying, impossible conclusion.

The Guilty Dead has redeemed my faith in this series and I'm anxious to go back and read Nothing Stays Buried (#8), which I somehow missed. Or maybe I prejudged it after my disappointment with The Sixth Idea. Who knows. I'm just happy that this latest release was entertaining and held my interest. It was fun to learn about some new events in the Monkeewrench team's lives and while it may not be quite as good as the earlier installments in the series, I'm back on board and look forward to the next release, Ice Cold Heart, which is due out in September.

Click on book titles to read my earlier reviews.

The Sixth Idea

The Sixth Idea by P.J. Tracy
Monkeewrench, #7
Mystery
2016 G.P. Putnam's Sons
Finished on August 20, 2016
Rating: 2/5 (Fair)

Publisher's Blurb:

The peaceful Christmas season in Minneapolis is shattered when two friends, Chuck Spencer and Wally Luntz, scheduled to meet in person for the first time, are murdered on the same night, two hours and several miles apart, dramatically concluding winter vacation for homicide detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth.

An hour north of Minneapolis, Lydia Ascher comes home to find two dead men in her basement. When Leo and Gino discover her connection to their current cases, they suspect that she is a target, too. The same day, an elderly, terminally ill man is kidnapped from his home, an Alzheimer’s patient goes missing from his care facility, and a baffling link among all the crimes emerges.

This series of inexplicable events sends the detectives sixty years into the past to search for answers—and straight to Grace MacBride’s Monkeewrench, a group of eccentric computer geniuses who devote their time and resources to helping the cops solve the unsolvable. What they find is an unimaginable horror—a dormant Armageddon that might be activated at any moment unless Grace and her partners Annie, Roadrunner, and Harley Davidson, along with Leo and Gino, can find a way to stop it.

This highly anticipated installment in the Monkeewrench series was a terrible disappointment. The story lacked tension and seemed unnecessarily drawn out. I was curious enough to finish, but overall, it was not worth my time.  If you're a fan of the Monkeewrench crew and want to see what's in store for these characters, I suggest you get a copy of the book at your library. I doubt it's one you'll read twice.

Waiting on Wednesday

The Sixth Idea

by P.J. Tracy

Available on August 2, 2016

Publisher's Blurb:

The Monkeewrench crew returns in a twisty, heart-stopping new thriller.

The peaceful Christmas season in Minneapolis is shattered when two friends, Chuck Spencer and Wally Luntz, scheduled to meet in person for the first time, are murdered on the same night, two hours and several miles apart, dramatically concluding winter vacation for homicide detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth.

An hour north of Minneapolis, Lydia Ascher comes home to find two dead men in her basement. When Leo and Gino discover her connection to their current cases, they suspect that she is a target, too. The same day, an elderly, terminally ill man is kidnapped from his home, an Alzheimer’s patient goes missing from his care facility, and a baffling link among all the crimes emerges.

This series of inexplicable events sends the detectives sixty years into the past to search for answers—and straight to Grace MacBride’s Monkeewrench, a group of eccentric computer geniuses who devote their time and resources to helping the cops solve the unsolvable. What they find is an unimaginable horror—a dormant Armageddon that might be activated at any moment unless Grace and her partners Annie, Roadrunner, and Harley Davidson, along with Leo and Gino, can find a way to stop it.

Can.Not.Wait!!!!

Click here to read more about this wonderful series. 

Off the Grid

Off the Grid by P.J. Tracy
Mystery
Monkeewrench Series #6
2012 Putnam
Finished: 1/21/13
Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)



Publisher’s Blurb:

On a sailboat ten miles off the Florida coast, Grace MacBride, partner in Monkeewrench Software, thwarts an assassination attempt on retired FBI agent John Smith. A few hours later, in Minneapolis, a fifteen-year-old girl is discovered in a vacant lot, her throat slashed. Later that day, two young men are found in their home a few blocks away, killed execution-style. The next morning, the dead bodies of three more men turn up, savagely murdered in the same neighborhood.

As Minneapolis homicide detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth struggle to link the three crimes, they learn that there have been similar murders in other cities around the United States. Piece by piece, evidence accumulates, pointing to a suspect that shocks them to the core, uncovering a motive that puts the entire Midwest on high alert and Monkeewrench in the direct line of fire. Before it's all over, Grace and her partners, Annie, Roadrunner, and Harley Davidson, find themselves in the middle of a shocking collision of violence on a remote northern Minnesota reservation, fighting for their lives.

Sounds pretty gruesome, doesn’t it? Thank goodness for the levity provided by Gino’s smart-ass dialogue. His fear of flying scenes had me laughing so hard, I had tears streaming down my cheeks. The romantic tension between Leo and Grace helped keep the pages turning, as well. As I usually find with mysteries, the finale was somewhat anticlimactic (if not sappy), but overall this was an entertaining read. I only wish this talented mother-daughter writing duo would crank their books out more quickly. Two to four years between publications is too long for this fan to endure! Highly recommend!

Shoot to Thrill

Shoot to Thrill by P.J. Tracy
Mystery/Thriller
2010 G. P. Putnam Sons
Finished on 2/10/11
Rating: 4.5 (Terrific!)





Product Description:

It's eighty-five degrees in the shade when Minneapolis detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth pull into the MPD parking garage. They're driving a tricked-out Caddy, repossessed from a low-level drug dealer. It's not a Beemer or a Mercedes, but it's got GPS, air conditioning, and electric seats with more positions than the Kama Sutra.

But things are heating up inside the station house, too. The bomb squad's off to investigate another suspicious package at the mall, and kids are beating the crap out of each other and posting it on YouTube. And before Leo and Gino can wish for a straight-on homicide, the call comes in: a floater.

Soon they're humping it along a derelict stretch of the Mississippi River, beyond the green places where families picnic and admire the views. They can see her-she looks like a bride in her white formal gown-face down, dead in the water. And so it begins.

Across town, Grace McBride's Monkeewrench crew-the computer geeks who made a fortune on games, now helping the cops with anticrime software-has been recruited by the FBI to investigate a series of murder videos posted on the Web. It's not long before Rolseth, Magozzi, and Monkeewrench discover the frightening link between the unlucky bride and the latest, most horrific use of the Internet yet. Using their skills to scour the Net in search of the perpetrator, the team must race against the clock to stop a killer in his tracks.

P.J. Tracy is the pseudonym of the mother-daughter writing team of Patricia Lambrecht and Traci Lambrecht. Winners of the Anthony, Barry, Gumshoe and Minnesota Book Awards, they each live in rural Minnesota, just outside of Minneapolis.

I’ve read all five books in the Monkeewrench series and while this wasn’t nearly as intense as Dead Run, it’s probably my favorite. The suspenseful plot kept me reading far too late into the night and I wound up having a couple of dreams revolving around the characters. I wouldn’t exactly say they were nightmares, but I did awaken with a feeling of unease. I love the witty banter between Gino & Leo, the camaraderie between the Monkeewrench crew, and in this particular book, the introduction to FBI Special Agent John Smith.

I read mysteries and thrillers purely for the entertainment factor, but every so often I’m taken aback by some surprisingly beautiful writing. I’ve come to expect it with Dennis Lehane, but I was pleasantly surprised to read the following by this mother-daughter writing duo:

How strange, then, that after so many near-misses, well into the second half of his time on earth, he was learning to excel at life—the one thing he’d never really aspired to.

Once a year for all the years he’d been with the Bureau, he’d taken the boat south to the Keys; sometimes all the way to the Caribbean. For two weeks he’d dance the boat through the waters that had too many colors to claim one, watched sun and moon and ocean mingle like a trio of lovers, and felt his mind slow down and finally bob and drift like a piece of flotsam on the swells. He’d stop at any port where he liked to mingle with strange and interesting people who didn’t know him, which gave him license to laugh and joke and be someone else. He ate bar food on rickety piers while his bare feet swung over the water, and sometimes drank with women whose names he couldn’t remember. Two weeks a year. Less than eight percent of his adult life.

He closed his eyes and smelled salt, heard the ticking of the rigging against the mast and the ruffle of heavy cloth in the breeze, and then felt the wind lift his hair for the first time in years. He hadn’t had it cut for three weeks now, an all-time record. Maybe he’d let it grow long like Harley’s and wear it in a ponytail, just another gray-haired man reverting to the wild.

There’s actually a bit more to this passage, but to include the subsequent paragraphs would only spoil the story for those of you who haven’t yet read the book.

I’m quite a stickler when it comes to reading a series in the order of publication, but in this case it’s safe to say that one could easily pick up Shoot to Thrill and not feel lost in the back-story details (or for that matter, discover any spoilers pertaining to the previous works). This is quite an entertaining series and my only complaint is that it took four years to publish this most recent installment. I was very satisfied with the ending and, once again, I’m anxious for the next release. I certainly hope we see more of John Smith.

Snow Blind

Snow Blind by P.J. Tracy
Mystery
Finished on 7/28/06
Rating: A- (8/10 Very good)

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved to read. While all the other children in my kindergarten class stretched out on their mats at naptime, I got to sit with my teacher, quietly reading from Dick & Jane. Looking back, I don’t recall any of the other kids trading naps for a chance to read to the teacher, but maybe they did. All I know is I felt very special and very lucky.

As a young reader, I enjoyed the popular children’s series such as the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House books, The Bobbsey Twins, The Happy Hollisters, All-of-A-Kind Family and Anne of Green Gables. I also found great pleasure in discovering the classic stand-alones: The Magic Far-Away Tree, Heidi, and The Secret Garden. Yet unlike many of my friends, I was never terribly interested in mysteries, only reading a solitary Nancy Drew (The Hidden Staircase) and maybe a couple from the Trixie Belden collection.

In spite of the distraction of boys and the beach, my love for reading didn’t subside when I hit my teens; however, I don’t remember too much of what I read for pleasure: That Was Then, This Is Now; Go Ask Alice; The Shining (had to read this one on the beach – it scared the crap out of me!); an occasional Sidney Sheldon or (gasp) Danielle Steel. But again, no mysteries.

Life got busy (marriage, baby, divorce, back-to-school, remarriage) and before I knew it I got sucked into the world of computers and the Internet. In the mid 90s I discovered online book groups, opening up a whole new world of authors to choose from. I began to read Ian McEwan, Rohinton Mistry, Jose Saramago, Richard Russo, Ann Patchett, Barbara Kingsolver, Donna Woolfolk Cross, Margaret Atwood, and Mary Doria Russell. Gone were the days of Steel, Grisham and Sanders. Lots of contemporary fiction, but still no mysteries.

Then, someone with whom I share similar reading tastes mentioned that she greatly enjoyed mysteries by Dennis Lehane and Harlan Coben. I kept hearing these names and finally decided to give them a try. What a thrill to not only discover a new group of great authors, but a new genre as well. I fell in love with Lehane’s Kenzie/Gennaro duo; Coben’s Myron Bolitar and his psychotic sidekick, Win; Robert Parker’s gutsy and intelligent Sunny Randall; John Sandford’s womanizing Lucas Davenport; and most recently, P.J. Tracy’s Monkeewrench Gang. I love the ongoing character development in each of these series, for very much the same reason I love a good TV drama (Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, and of course, the very best of the best, House M.D.). It’s not so much about the mystery and unraveling of clues, hoping to figure out whodunit, but rather the bantering and camaraderie between the regulars in the series that keep me coming back for more. Kenzie, Bolitar, Randall, Davenport, and Grace all share a common trait with the Fishers, Tony Soprano, and Gregory House: They’re flawed individuals and often miserable, which makes them all the more believable and human, and thus, loveable.

Snow Blind, Tracy’s latest Monkeewrench novel, doesn’t disappoint. Set in the frigid winter environs of Minneapolis and surrounding areas, Detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth are back in action, tracking down leads to a series of murders, while forced to babysit Iris Rikker, the newly elected sheriff of rural Dundas County.

Damnit, there weren’t supposed to be bodies. Bodies had never been mentioned, not once.

She stared holes into the eyes of her reflection, mentally reinforcing who and what she was – onetime city girl, substitute English teacher at whatever school in the district would take her, and the brand-new deputy who’d been working a scant two months on night-shift dispatch because part-time teaching didn’t pay the bills – and then she closed her eyes and took a deep, shaky breath. Yesterday she had been those things. Today she was the newly elected sheriff of one of the largest rural counties in Minnesota and some jackass named Sampson thought she was the person to call when you found a body lying around.

In spite of the fact that Grace, Harley and Roadrunner (the computer whizzes, collectively known as the Monkeewrench gang) appear only briefly in this new release, Magozzi, Rolseth and Rikker are just as entertaining and make up for any void caused by the absence of the others.

The dilemma of writing a review about a mystery/thriller is the constant possibility of revealing a “spoiler.” For this reason, these reviews tend to be a bit light in plot detail. You’ll just have to take my word for it. This is another great read by a talented mother-daughter writing team. If you haven’t read P.J. Tracy’s mysteries, you’re in for a treat. Meanwhile, I have the new Sunny Randall book in my stacks! Life is good.