Shoot to Thrill

A body is discovered floating in the Mississippi river and the cause of death is ruled a suicide. Minneapolis cops Gino and Magozzi think it is an open and shut case. Until the FBI shows up.

FBI agent John Smith invites the assistance of several known criminal hackers in solving a new string of cyber crimes-snuff films posted online. The Monkeewrench crew agrees to help and finds the link between the FBI case and the case the Minneapolis homicide detectives have already deemed closed. Can they crack the code and catch the killer or will the vast world wide web continue to provide a mask for the criminal while simultaneously perpetuating a new breed of crime?

In P.J. Tracy’s Shoot To Thrill criminals are able to gain notoriety through show more posting videos of their crimes on the internet. As technology advances, the criminals evolve and adapt and are able to connect in a way that was impossible before the internet. This novel is definitely a page turner that is difficult to put down after you have read about a hundred pages. The writing is witty and rich with Midwestern idioms. The characters are intriguing and the naming of the FBI agent John Smith further exemplifies the humor of the mother-daughter writing duo. I will definitely be picking up another P.J. Tracy novel in the future! show less

Life Is Good. FINALLY a new P.J. Tracy in the Monkeewrench series after far too long, and next up in my stack of books are the final two in Stieg Larsson's trilogy that started with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. My bliss would be complete if Edward Wright would come out with another John Ray Horn novel.

This is the fifth in the series about a firm of software engineers. The company is called Monkeewrench. All of the team are brilliant, capable, and damaged, none more so than Grace MacBride, the main character, who has been through levels of trauma that seem unsurvivable. She lives carefully, and works with the people who are essentially her family, and sometimes with Minneapolis detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth. Magozzi loves show more Grace, and she lets him get as close to her as she can let anyone.

The FBI finds that there are five videos on the internet that are of genuine murders. Agent John Smith, nearing retirement, comes to Minneapolis to hire Monkeewrench and other computer crackers to find who is posting the videos so they can catch the murderer or murderers. Magozzi and Rolseth get involved when a sixth murder happens in their jurisdiction. Someone leaks the story, and the code that identifies that a new murder video will be posted becomes the next viral Internet meme, greatly hampering the investigation.

It is a good book, though not my favorite in the series. I did really like the new character of Agent Smith. And I appreciate that the global level of communications brings new dangers along with great benefits, though I think the authors (a mother-daughter team who use the pseudonym P.J. Tracy) come close to getting preachy about it. Read the whole series, it is well worth it. show less

The FBI sends liaison, John Smith, to work with the Monkeewrench crew, a group of programming geniuses who use their skills to help stop criminals. John Smith is six months from a mandatory retirement. He's lived a life as anonymous and bland as his name, connecting to no one and nothing except for his work. After 30 years of service, he suddenly finds himself in charge of an investigation into a series of video clips posted online which appear to depict actual murders.

Despite having determined that all the clips originated from the same location, the FBI is unable to trace the videos back to their ultimate source due to extremely sophisticated masking techniques employed by the person or people posting them. Smith enlists Monkeewrench show more to help trace the origin of the clips, as well as to design a software program that will be able to run an analysis of similar videos posted online to determine if they depict real murders or are staged murders posted by copycats seeking their 15 minutes of fame. Detectives Rolseth and Magozzi, veterans of working cases with the Monkeewrench crew, find themselves drawn into the Federal investigation where they work to discover who is behind the country-wide connected killing and violence spree that seems based on an internet group’s kill list.

Shoot to Thrill is a timely thriller that addresses the junction of technology and deviant behavior and whether social media and instant internet fame drives people to more heinous acts than could previously be imagined. “The web is normalizing deviant behavior” one character suggests. I really enjoy this series and the incredibly humorous banter between Rolseth and Magozzi. I liked this one, in particular, because it seemed to have equal parts of Magozzi/Rolseth and also of the incredibly entertaining Monkeewrench crew. It can be read as a standalone novel but you'll understand the relationships better if you've read the first one in the series. show less

Magozzi and Rolseth's most recent case is that of a transvestite dressed as a bride found face down in the Mississippi River. At first it looks like an accident, but that changes to murder when it is learned that someone videoed the murder and posted it on YouTube.

Meanwhile, Grace and the Monkeewrench gang are trying to write some software that can distinguish between videos that fake murders and those that are real. They are working with FBI Agent John Smith who is nearing his mandatory retirement date and wondering what he is going to do with the rest of his life.

When it is discovered that there is a chatroom where murderers and would-be murderers can go and brag about their kills, the case and the project come together. The show more Monkeewrench gang and the police work together to try to find the killers before they can kill again.

A side issue has to do with the disaffected using the internet to get their fifteen minutes of fame with a case of someone leaving packages with suspicious contents all over the Twin Cities. This story talks a lot about the negative side of the Web since it gives a forum for crazies of all kinds.

I thought it was a great story and a thought-provoking one too. show less

The fifth entry in the Monkeewrench series of crime novels, Shoot to Thrill gathers all the usual characters and has them investigating an unusual series of murders. These murders are announced in advance on the internet and then actual filmed footage of the crime is posted afterwards. Of course the perpetrators are ensuring that these messages are untraceable but the geniuses at Monkeewrench are working hard at discovering their identity.

We are introduced to a newcomer to the series, FBI agent John Smith, who actually hits it off with the Monkeewrench crew and with Grace in particular. In fact, at the end of the book, John and Grace make a big change to their lives, which will certainly impact the next book. Detectives Magozzi and show more Rolseth are in fine form and there is plenty of high tech puzzles for the Monkeewrench crew to work on, but for me this was probably my least favorite book of the series so far. As there are still plenty of Monkeewrench novels to come, I am hopeful that the mother/daughter team will bring the series back to it’s excellent level with the next book. show less

This one is fairly well balanced between the Monkeywrench crew assisting the FBI (in the form of the likeable Agent John Smith) and Leo and Gino doing their bit in the fight against murderers posting videos of their killings to the internet.

Stars deducted for the (at best ambiguous) attitude to homosexuals, the entirely unrelated bombing sub-plot, and the whole Leo/Chelsea and John/Grace episodes. I hope these last strands are misdirection so far as the series as a whole is concerned.

The last couple of books in this series haven’t been my favorites. A few reviewers have complained of no character growth in this one, and I think that’s fair. The dialogue was kind of corny, and a few overgeneralizations about the sexes got under my skin. Also, I missed Sheriff Halloran and the other Wisconsin folks. I hope they’ll be back in future books.
I liked the introduction of FBI agent John Smith and how the Monkeewrench crew absorbed him into their group. It will be fun if he becomes a recurring character.
I didn’t see the twist coming at the end—I really should have—but I do enjoy being surprised, so that’s in the book’s favor too.
I’m not ready to quit this series, but I am ready for a break. I think good show more things may still be to come, so I’ll be back, eventually, for the next. show less