The Guilty Dead - P.J. Tracy

The Guilty Dead by P.J. Tracy

First Paragraph(s):

Gus Riskin sipped from a bottle of water as he surveyed Trey's living room.  What he saw infuriated and disgusted him.  The priceless Persian rug beneath his feet was filthy, pockmarked with cigarette burns and littered with the castoffs of a dissolute life: pizza and take-out boxes of indeterminate age now housed skittering colonies of roaches; empty beer bottles and martini glasses had drooled out their meager remains, leaving crunchy spots on the expensive silk pile; drug paraphernalia and detritus was scattered around the room like grotesque confetti.

My Thoughts:

The Guilty Dead is the 9th book in the Monkeewrench series, written by P.J. Tracy.  The author has been a mother and daughter, who penned these books together.  Sadly, the mother lost her battle to cancer almost two years ago.  This is the first book written solely by Traci Lambrecht, the daughter.  And it was a very good entry into this favorite series of mine.  My husband and I listened to it on a recent trip.  Our only quibble was the narrator had changed and that took a bit of getting used to.  We were familiar with a male narrator and the new one is female, Sarah Borges.  She did a good job though and we adjusted. 

The Monkeewrench books have a set of characters that include the Monkeewrench Software owners, Grace, Annie, Harley, and Roadrunner.  Plus, there are the cops, Leo and Gino and their colleagues.  Over the course of the series, this reader has come to love them all.  The Guilty Dead started out a little slow, but the story soon got moving and once the familiar people appeared, it was all good.  Each of the books tends to focus a bit more on the cop side or the software/hacking side.  In my opinion, this was a cop book.  Both my husband and I figured out the end game pretty early, but we enjoyed the ride.  As I said, I'm delighted that this series will continue and I look forward to more Monkeewrench books in the future.  A recommended series - start with the first book, Monkeewrench.   

Blurb:

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.