I have read alot of the previous PJ Tracy novels and their series is one of my favourites. Therefore I was delighted to receive an email from Katie at Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House inviting me onto the blog tour for the latest in the series The Guilty Dead.
The Guilty Dead starts with a suspected suicide. On the anniversary of his son’s fatal drug overdose Greg Norwood is found dead, apparently shooting himself after being overcome with grief. Detectives Magozzi and Rolseth are asked to go along and investigate. When it becomes apparent that the victim was left handed yet was shot with his right hand the investigation starts to take a different turn. Alongside this we meet up with our favourite computer wizards the Monkeewrench team. They are creating a new computer programme that will help track terrorists. When they receive a visit from the police asking for their help in outing a suspected terrorist attack on the city they have to work round the clock to try and get their programme finished.
The Guilty Dead is a twisting fast paced book that leads you through terror, politics, computers and family secrets. The stories all run alongside each other with a big list of characters all pulling the threads of their own narrative eventually linking together for the final conclusion.
To me this novel felt a little different to the previous one’s I’d read. Grace MacBride, previously a paranoid loner with only her Monkeewrench crew for company is now living with Detective Magozzi and expecting a baby. Also the detectives seemed to take a much more prominent role in this novel than the computer geeks do. However for me that was a good thing as I really enjoy the characters in this series. The oddball Monkeewrench team are a brilliant group and each one of them brings a different dynamic to the story. Having read them from the start it is interesting to see how they have all developed over the series. The detectives themselves are a great pair, and the banter between them certainly lightens up what can be some pretty dark stories.
The stand out part of all these novels though, is the whirlwind of a story which is complex yet easy to follow and will keep you hooked throughout. I would highly recommend this as a series if you haven’t yet been introduced to Detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth, and if you want to just dive straight in then The Guilty Dead is a great place to start.
The Guilty Dead is available on amazon.
More about the author:
The Guilty Dead is the eagerly-awaited ninth instalment of the Twin Cities series which has sold over 1
million copies in the UK and more than 3 million worldwide.
P. J. Tracy was the pseudonym for the mother-and-daughter writing team of P. J. and Traci Lambrecht.
Together P. J. and Traci were authors of the bestselling thrillers Want to Play? (a Richard and Judy Book
Club pick), Live Bait, Dead Run, Snow Blind, Play to Kill, Two Evils, Cold Kill and Nothing Stays Buried.
P. J. passed away in 2016, but Traci is continuing the series with this book, The Guilty Dead
A crime readers blog 