She Treads Softly: Ice Cold Heart

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

Ice Cold Heart

Ice Cold Heart by P. J. Tracy
Crooked Lane Books: 9/10/19
eBook review copy; 320 pages
ISBN-13: 9781643851327
Monkeewrench Series #10

Ice Cold Heart by P. J. Tracy is a highly recommended police procedural and the tenth book featuring the Monkeewrench crew.

Minneapolis Detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth are called to investigate the murder of Kelly Ramage. Her homicide was a gruesome planned act and pointed to a secret life Kelly was living. The investigation leads back to an art gallery where Kelly was last seen attending the opening for a artist whose work is disturbing and may have inspired Kelly's murder. To complicate matters, a show by the same artist apparently inspired a murder in another city at a previous opening, and a psychic who came in before Kelly's murder and predicted it is later found dead.

At the same time the genius tech partners at Monkeewrench are working on increasing the security for Bit Monster, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. After a cyberattack that cost them nearly $400 million, they need to find the guilty hacker and stop it from happening again. Soon it becomes clear that the killer Magozzi is looking for, is likely a serial killer and a digital trail begins to suggest a link between the Bit Monster cyber theft and the murders.

With all the returning characters, it make it less imperative to add a lot of character development in the long running series, although there is some advancement in the characters, especially Roadrunner. All of the returning characters are likeable, although if you are new to the series it will seem like a whole lot of characters to keep straight and follow all at once.

Ice Cold Heart is a satisfying police procedural/mystery, even for someone jumping into series a bit late. The investigation by the police is expertly integrated with the Monkeewrench crew's involvement. The great writing and short chapters coordinate together and keep your interest high while carefully covering all the various plot threads and the developments in them. The complicated plot of this mystery and procedural takes several diverse story lines and ends up weaving them all together into a very satisfying denouement.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Crooked Lane Books.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.