Review by Booklist Review
Forget Florida. Lose L.A. It's Minnesota that's heating up contemporary mysteries. Think William Kent Krueger and John Sandford, both of whom move their novels easily between the Twin Cities and the wild country to the north. Two more Minnesota crime writers, each with their second novels coming out, prove the cold front is no fluke. In Live Bait0 , the mother-daughter writing team that goes by the name P. J. Tracy concocts a police procedural that can be cherished for its dead-on cop humor and cop banter, as much as for the intricate plot. "Homicide is dead," laments a Minneapolis homicide detective: no bodies on the ground for months, only cold cases to keep the homicide guys busy. And then, a boon for Minneapolis detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth--two possible murders in one spring day. Both of the deceased are in their 80s; both live near each other. The cases are satisfyingly tricky. In the first, there is no crime scene, since the nongrieving widow dragged her husband from the outdoors into a greenhouse. In the second, there is a scene but no body--until one turns up tied to the railroad tracks. If a police procedural can be both disturbing and fun-filled, this is it. --Connie Fletcher Copyright 2004 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The mother-daughter mystery writing team known as P.J. Tracy produces another winner with this follow-up to 2003's lively Monkeewrench. After several homicide-free months in their hometown of St. Paul, wisecracking police detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth are back in action when elderly-and much beloved-gardener Morey Gilbert is found face up near his greenhouse with a bullet hole in his head. At first, the prime murder suspects are family members: Gilbert's estranged son, Jack, a slick personal injury lawyer, and Gilbert's dry-eyed widow, Lily, who discovered the corpse-and moved it before the police arrived. When three more slayings follow, Magozzi and Rolseth discern disturbing common threads: each of the victims is over 80 and-except for Arlen Fisher, shot in the arm and dragged onto the train tracks to face his doom-Jewish survivors of Nazi concentration camps. Critical clues, including a gun traced to murders around the globe, surface as straitlaced detectives Aaron Langer and Johnny McLaren join the more offbeat Magozzi and Rolseth on the case. Tracy serves up punchy prose and quirky characters, from a sartorially challenged police chief to a plump, shrewd crime tech named Grimm. Romance for bachelor Magozzi arrives in the form of Grace MacBride, a comely computer whiz whose sophisticated software program, FLEE, has helped crack countless cases. The courtship moves slowly despite undeniable sparks; MacBride is still haunted by Monkeewrench-the deadly case that first brought the two together and continues to hover like a cloud of doom. With her stash of high-tech research tools, including special face recognition software, MacBride delivers revelations about both victims and perpetrator, leading Magozzi and Rolseth toward the case's spine-chilling resolution. With generous doses of humor and suspense, this sharp, satisfying thriller will rivet readers from the start. Agent, Ellen Geiger. Author tour. (May 3) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Fresh from Monkeewrench, Minneapolis detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth get to work as elderly murder victims start piling up. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
More serial-killing woes for Minneapolis Homicide's Det. Leo Magozzi and his ladylove Grace MacBride's software-development cohorts (Monkeewrench, 2003). Nursery owner Morey Gilbert is 84, watch repairman Arlen Fischer 89, widowed Rose Kleber a mere 78. Who's the murderer who can't wait for them to die of natural causes? And what kind of assassin shoots an old man like Fischer in the arm, improvises a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, carts him out of the house, and ties him to the railroad tracks with barbed wire? The answers, Magozzi's convinced, lie in connections among the victims only the Monkeewrench gang's new FLEE detective program can unearth. While he's waiting for FLEE to deliver the goods, Leo ponders why Morey Gilbert's son Jack, a sleazeball lawyer, wouldn't speak to his father, by all accounts the gentlest man in the world; how the murder last year of Morey's daughter figures into the present bloodbath; and what to make of the ballistics report that ties Fischer's murder to half a dozen unsolved homicides around the country. For the rest, Tracy returns in surprising detail to the idiosyncratic formula of her striking debut--Minneapolis cops and computer nerds battling the serial killer of a mysterious group of strangers--with more gravitas and more heartfelt revelations substituting for the wit, antic byplay, and originality of the prototype. If it's anything like Tracy's first two, Minnesotans may want to duck and cover before her third hits the bookshelves. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.