Live Bait

The second in this series, and not really featuring the Monkeewrench team much at all, apart from Grace inventing a pioneering (for 2005) facial recognition system, and the others kitting out an RV. Instead the police investigate the murders of elderly Jews who had survived concentration camps. The plot was once again borderline unbelievable, but nevertheless a page turner. Perhaps not quite as amusing as the first, but I'm going to keep going.

Who would kill Morey Gilbert, a man without an enemy, a man who might as well have been a saint? His tiny, cranky little wife, Lily, is no help, and may even be a suspect; his estranged son, Jack, an infamous ambulance-chasing lawyer, has his own enemies; and his son-in-law, former cop Marty Pullman, is so depressed over his wife's death a year ago that he's ready to kill himself, but not Morey. The number of victims - all elderly - grows, and the city is fearful once again. Detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth’s investigation threatens to uncover a series of horrendous secrets, some buried within the heart of the police department itself.

There was a lot I liked about this police procedural: the wisecracking banter between the show more cops, an interesting plot, a variety of feisty characters and a number of twists or surprises. Sure, there were a couple of things that weren’t quite plausible but I enjoyed the telling of the story so much that I didn’t mind. I plan to read more by this author. show less

A different outing, 6 months later. The Monkeywrench crew hardly feature which is a shame. Deputies Halloran and Sharon Mueller don't make it in either which is also a shame as they had some real chemistry in the last book. instead we have the increasingly guilt laden Aaron Langer. Not an improvement.

After a summer quiet on the homicide front Gino and Leo get called to a bizare murder of one of Minneapolis' unkown saints. Someoen who everybody who knew claimed was goodness personified. But somebidy evidently didn't think so, and the bodies quickly mount as Leo and Gino try to find out what connects the killings of various old people in the same part of town.

Unsurprisingly a dramatic thunderstorm moves in just at the final scene. This show more is usually a TV drama trick, and doesn't work so well in print.

The plot is well detailed, skipping theodd inconvenient explanation here and there but nothing to distracting, the characters haven't mproved much from the last outing, but the incidental charcters are described better than average, the whole Gillian family are noteworthy.

Enjoyable, readable, fast moving. With a dramatic twist at the end. show less

Minneapolis is in the midst of a murder dry spell and Magozzi and Rolseth are getting bored. But all that changes one night when Morey Gilbert, the elderly owner of a greenhouse, is found murdered and, that same night, Arlen Fischer, another elderly man in the same neighborhood, is found murdered and tied with barbed wire to a train track.

Magozzi and Rolseth are assigned the death of Morey Gilbert, the greenhouse owner. They find that his elderly wife had moved his body and washed and shaved him before calling the police. This makes her a suspect. Their estranged son Jack, who is a personal injury lawyer, is also a suspect. So is their son-in-law Marty Pullman who is a former police officer who left the force after his wife was show more murdered. Otherwise, Morey seems to be the local saint offering help to anyone who needs it. He is even putting one of his young workers through college. Everyone loved him.

Before they can get a handle on the crime, another elderly grandmother in the same neighborhood is also found murdered. And, a day later, Ben Schuler, one of Morey's best friends, is also found murdered. Magozzi and Rolseth are baffled. They try to connect the victims but they can't find any connection between Morey and Rose Kleber, the grandmother except that they were both Jewish and both survivors of concentration camps. So was Ben Schuler.

Even turning all of their information to Grace MacBride at Monkeewrench to run through her new computer program that quickly finds connections doesn't really help. Magozzi and Grace are tentatively working their way to a relationship which is being hampered by the aftereffects of Magozzi's divorce and Grace's paranoia based on the way she was treated by the FBI when some murders happened around her many years earlier. Grace and the rest of the Monkeewrench gang are getting ready to take off around the US in a tricked out RV to share their crime fighting software with small, understaffed police departments with unsolved crimes.

The more Magozzi and Rolseth investigate the more they discover that Morey and his friends Rose and Ben had deep secrets. Of course, so do many of the other characters including some of the police officers investigating one or the other of the crimes.

This was an entertaining mystery. I especially liked the Minneapolis settling and the many times the quirks of Minnesotans became part of the story. show less

The mother-daughter writing team of P. J. Tracy have produced another great mystery with the second entry into their Monkeewrench series. Live Bait brings back the wise-cracking team of Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth as they work on the murder of a well known Minneapolis Nursery owner. This case quickly escalates into a series of murders, with all the victims being elderly Jewish people. The one thing the victims have in common is that they were all survivors of the Nazi concentration camps.

Along with the main police detectives many of the other characters that were introduced in the first book are back. Grace and Leo are still involved and although their relationship appears to have no definition, Leo is still upset when he learns that show more Grace and her Monkeewrench team are leaving Minnesota to work on a case in Arizona for a few months. Nevertheless, their romance takes a positive step forward and I suspect Grace will be back.

This series delivers both on the suspense and the humor. The authors have developed intelligent, well-drawn characters that engage in snappy, humorous dialogue, they are considerate and compassionate which make them easy to root for. When you add excellent plotting and timing to the mix, it is no surprise that the reader is riveted to the pages. show less

I haven't read the first book in this series, Monkeewrench, but this one was a good read anyway.

The St Paul police detectives have been experiencing a lag in homicide in their city. While they can appreciate the lack of crime, they are bored. They quickly regret their boredom when bodies start piling up. Bodies of the elderly - with no discernable connections. Everyone loved Morey Gilbert, the first victim. So who would want to kill him?

In my view, there are two litmus tests any top-drawer mystery novel has to pass: (1) Do the detectives solve the crime through their own abilities? (2) Are readers surprised by the outcome?

Live Bait has much to recommend it, especially in the second half of the novel when the intricacies of the Gilbert show more family become more intriguing. There is a death in the final third that moved me to tears. However, it fails to deliver on the basic requirements mentioned above.

On point one, it is generally not a good sign if the detectives do absolutely nothing to solve the main mystery. In this story, they spend the first few chapters running around town complaining about the lack of air conditioning in their car. The heavy lifting is done by software geeks on the Monkeewrench team. On point two, I could partially anticipate "who dunnit" but not completely - and I certainly did not pick why. As the plot moves along rapidly, more and more secrets are revealed and there were quite a few surprises along the way.

Nonetheless, it is a great read. I like the way that Tracy takes a storyline that seems wildly outlandish (and it is) and grounds it in characters who are so well developed that it all becomes terribly believable. PJ Tracy is a raw talent and there is humour and characterisation to be admired in this novel. I'll look forward with interest to more from this author. show less

I did not like Live Bait nearly as much as the other books in the Monkeewrench series. There just seemed to be something lacking. Perhaps it was partly because Live Bait features Detectives Magozzi and Rolseth and the Monkeewrench crew is only marginally involved in the action. As much as I like the detectives, I think that Grace, Annie, Harley and Roadrunner are what make these books interesting.