Nothing Stays Buried and The Guilty Dead by P J Tracy

The Monkeewrench/Twin City Series: Book #8 & #9

My bookshelf ‘Monkeewrench’ corner with the other two books on kindle (rest assured I will be purchasing paperback copies of the two kindle books to sit with their ‘buddies’ on my shelf).

Nothing Stays Buried

 Now available in paperback/U.S /UK

Nothing Stays Buried is the eighth book in P J Tracy’s Twin Cities a.k.a. the Monkeewrench series.

Description

A young woman is murdered in a park in Minneapolis. When detectives Gino and Magozzi discover a playing card near the body, they recognise the work of a serial killer who has already struck the city once before.

But it’s worse than they imagined. The card is the four of spades; the last victim’s was the ace: it seems they’re already two murders behind.

Once again working with Grace MacBride and her team of analysts, they discover a web of evidence stretching back into the past. And there is little time to untangle it: this killer has a taste for blood, and he’s intent on playing out the deck . . .

The Guilty Dead

UK – August 23, 2018     US – September 11, 2018

The Guilty Dead is the ninth book in P J Tracy’s addictive and internationally bestselling Twin Cities a.k.a. the Monkeewrench series.

Description

Gregory Norwood, wealthy businessman and close friend of Minnesota’s leading candidate for Governor, is found dead on the first anniversary of his son’s drug overdose. It seems clear to Detectives Gino and Magozzi that grief drove him to suicide.

Until they realise the left-handed man seems to have used his right hand to pull the trigger. And they find the second body.

As the seemingly open-and-shut case becomes a murder enquiry, the detectives begin to delve into the dark secrets of one of the city’s most powerful families. It seems the murders are not the first in the Norwoods’ tragic story – and they won’t be the last . . .

My thoughts

Nothing Stays Buried: this is the last book the mother and daughter duo wrote together. I think it was quite fitting that this book has a softer feel to it but is nevertheless a terrific read. We are getting just a little more of the back story of the characters, particularly of Grace who is pregnant in this book, which I really enjoy as I love the Monkeewrench Crew, Gino, Maggozi and the Police team. The information is subtlety woven into the main detective storyline without detracting from it and is done in such a way that, for me, it actually enhances the whole. Two threads run through the book that of a missing woman being investigated by the Monkeewrench crew and the other is a serial killer case being worked by Gino and Maggozi.

The Minnesota weather is almost like another character and in this book it certainly takes centre stage for a short while. The book is partly set in Minneapolis but also in the wider Minnesotan countryside. The other characters we come across in this book are equally well drawn with a sensitivity and a knowledge of Minnesota that makes them very believable.

P J Tracy is an excellent writing team with a beautifully smooth and seamless writing style. Which is particularly apparent in the way the two main threads are brought together through the relationship of the characters and their working partnerships in such a well crafted, thrilling conclusion.

The Guilty Dead: Here we have Traci as the sole author of the 9th book of the series and it’s a cracker!

The Monkeewrench crew are beta testing a new programme which is just what the FBI need to sift and sort through masses of information to help them find what is or isn’t terrorist activity. When they actually get intel on a likely attack on Police HQ tensions run high.

Meanwhile, Gino and Maggozi catch a high profile case which at first appearance is a suicide – but Gregory Norwood is left-handed and that changes everything, that and a second body! And as the story unfolds around the Norwood household, which has known a fair bit of tragedy in recent years, it seems others may be in harms way.

It is always a joy to read a P J Tracy book and The Guilty Dead is no exception because as you read and the storyline unfolds you are treated to such a well crafted story, with great characterisation which smoothly weaves a tangled tale and then brings all the threads together in a thrilling, breathtaking conclusion.

I very much enjoyed these books, I have the whole Monkeewrench/Twin City series, and I highly recommend both Nothing Stays Buried and The Guilty Dead along with all the others books in this wonderful series.

If you can start at the beginning that, I think, will enhance your reading experience of the series but wherever you do start I hope you enjoy these books as much as I do.

With thanks to Michael Joseph Comms for an eARC of The Guilty Dead ‘Because you’ve enjoyed previous titles by P J Tracy we thought you might like to read the next book….’ and Penguin Random House UK via NetGalley. Well I couldn’t say no to that!

I have not received any payment in relation to my review.

I was delighted to receive a hardback copy of Nothing Stays Buried when I won it in a giveaway competition.

These books were also read as part of my #20BooksofSummer challenge and which I am, at last, catching up with my posts.

Information

Publisher:        Penguin: Michael Joseph         Penguin

The Guilty Dead

 

• Penguin
• Paperback Published 1st November 2018
• 320 Pages
• Michael Joseph
• Hardback Published 23rd August 2018
• 384 Pages

Nothing Stays Buried

 

• Penguin
• Paperback Published 2nd November 2017
• 320 Pages
• Michael Joseph
• Hardback Published 24th August 2017
• 320 Pages

 

 

Buy:

Author

PJ Tracy was the pseudonym of mother-daughter writing duo P.J. and Traci Lambrecht, winners of the Anthony, Barry, Gumshoe, and Minnesota Book Awards. Their eight novels, MONKEEWRENCH, LIVE BAIT, DEAD RUN, SNOW BLIND, SHOOT TO THRILL, OFF THE GRID, COLD KILL/THE SIXTH IDEA, and NOTHING STAYS BURIED have become national and international bestsellers.  THE GUILTY DEAD, the ninth installment of the Monkeewrench series, will be released in the US and the UK in fall of 2018.

PJ was a long-time resident of Minnesota until her death in December 2016.  Traci remains in rural Minnesota, just outside Minneapolis, and continues writing about the Monkeewrench gang.

P.J. Lambrecht always loved to tell people she was a college dropout and had no qualifications for being a writer except for a penchant for lying.  She had her first short story published in The Saturday Evening Post when Traci was eight, still mercifully oblivious to her mother’s plans to eventually trick her into creating a family business.

Traci Lambrecht spent most of her childhood riding and showing horses. She graduated with a Russian Studies major from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, where she also studied voice. Her aspirations of becoming a spy were dashed when the Cold War ended, so she began writing to finance her annoying habits of travel and singing in rock bands. Much to her mother’s relief, she finally realized that the written word was her true calling. Together, they had a long, prolific career writing together in many genres until PJ’s passing in December 2016.   Traci continues to write like a maniac, with PJ’s spirit sitting on her shoulder, cracking wise.

Nothing Stays Buried: Extract     P J Tracy Website    P J Tracy – Traci writes about her mother

 

P J Tracy Books in Order

The slaying of an old couple in small town America looks like one-off act of brutal retribution. But at the same time, in Minneapolis, teams of detectives scramble to stop a sickeningly inventive serial killer striking again in a city paralysed by fear.

When the two separate investigations converge on an isolated catholic boarding school, decades old secrets begin to fall away. It seems an old killer has resurfaced. Yet still the killer’s real identity remains dangerously out of reach . . .

 

When elderly Morey Gilbert is found, lying dead in the grass by his wife, Lily, it’s a tragedy, but it shouldn’t have been a shock – old people die. But when she finds a bullet hole in his skull, the blood washed away by heavy rain, sadness turns to fear. It looks like an execution…

Soon a whole city is fearful as new victims are found, killed with the same cold precision. All elderly. All apparently blameless.

Detectives Gino and Magozzi, race to uncover a connection and their best hope of doing so may be Grace McBride, beautiful, damaged survivor of an earlier killing spree. And the answers, it seems, are buried in a terrible past.

It should have been a simple journey – a drive from Minneapolis to Green Bay, Wisconsin. But a couple of unplanned detours lead Grace MacBride, Annie Belinsky and police Deputy Sharon Mueller deep in the northern woods, far from civilization and a mobile phone signal. Then the car breaks down.

The nervous search for a landline and a mechanic leads the women to Four Corners, a sleepy crossroads town. A place they soon wish they’d never stumbled on because something terrible happened in Four Corners…

Minneapolis, winter’s first white flakes; a park full of snowmen. But the layers of packed snow hide a ghoulish surprise.

First, the bodies of two cops are found inside the snowmen and then a day later, in the countryside to the north, Sheriff Iris Rikker makes a similarly shocking discovery. Soon Detectives Gino and Magozzi are sent north through the worst blizzard Minnesota’s seen for years to find what else links the investigations.

But some secrets you don’t want to uncover. And as the cases unravel, it seems snowmen aren’t the only ones with something to hide…

Minneapolis homicide cops Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth fish a murdered drag queen out of the Mississippi. Another day, another corpse. Except the victim’s death throes quickly appear in a video posted online. And there are other videos, other murders.

Unable to trace who is posting the videos, the cops turn to Grace MacBride and her crew of eccentric computer mavericks. But as the bodies and videos stack up, the team desperately try and answer a terrifying question:

Is this the work of a lone individual? Or of several killers who have taken social networking to the darkest extreme…

A missing teenage girl lies dead in a parking lot. Two young immigrants are killed in their apartment. Three men are found dead in the street nearby.

As the police struggle to establish what’s happened, they realise that the deaths may not be as random as they first appear. As the killings continue, homicide detectives Magozzi and Rolseath turn to maverick computer analyst Grace McBride for help, drawing her into an investigation that will threaten her life.

And as the evidence mounts, it reveals terrifying intent. Ultimately, it forces the two detectives to make a dreadful choice: down which path does the lesser of two evils lie . . .