‘Guilty Dead’ has fast-paced story line

“The Guilty Dead” (Crooked Lane), by P.J. Tracy

In P.J. Tracy’s “The Guilty Dead,” a young man battles addiction and when he finally decides he’s going to clean himself up after one last binge, he meets his maker courtesy of the dealer who supplied the extra-deadly drugs. Though it was murder, the official determination by authorities is an accidental overdose. On the one-year anniversary of his death, the young man’s father, prominent businessman Gregory Norwood, still grieves, and he’s soon found dead with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

His immediate family doesn’t believe he would kill himself, and Minneapolis detective Leo Magozzi sees too many inconsistencies at the scene. He knows in his gut that it’s murder, which leads him to question the overdose of his son a year earlier.

In addition, Magozzi soon learns from his allies at the company Monkeewrench Software that a possible terrorist attack is imminent somewhere in downtown Minneapolis. How does the death of Norwood and his son tie into this bold plot, and if they are related, can it be stopped in time?

P.J. Tracy has been the pseudonym for the mother-daughter writing team of P.J. and Traci Lambrecht for the previous novels in the Monkeewrench series. P.J. died in December 2016, and Traci has continued the tradition of wellcrafted and tense stories with this fun cast of characters. The mystery behind the deaths along with the fast-paced story line about capturing the killer and stopping a plan that could kill hundreds of people guarantees an engrossing read. Those who haven’t found the pleasure of stories involving the Monkeewrench gang can easily jump-start with this one, and those who enjoy a mix of the cozy mystery and an intense thriller will enjoy as well.