She Treads Softly: The Deepest Cut

Wednesday, August 27, 2025

The Deepest Cut

The Deepest Cut by P. J. Tracy
9/9/25; 320 pages
Crooked Lane Books
Monkeewrench Series , #11

The Deepest Cut by P. J. Tracy is a highly recommended procedural featuring the Monkeewrench crew, cyber and software experts, who assist the Minneapolis PD and Dundas County Sheriff's Office. This is the eleventh book in the series. The plot continues the story started in the tenth novel, Ice Cold Heart from 2019. Readers new to the series will want to start with earlier novels or at least Ice Cold Heart before reading The Deepest Cut.

Wolfgang Mauer escaped from a maximum security mental hospital in a rural area and it set on revenge against those responsible for his incarceration, including Minneapolis homicide detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth along with the Monkeewrench gang. He leaves a trail of three dead bodies and kidnaps a ten-year-old boy, Travis. Sheriff Iris Rikker is a new, inexperienced sheriff and needs the help of Magozzi, Gino, and Monkeewrench in the search before more lives are lost.

This is an action-packed fast-paced manhunt for Mauer and young Travis. The action follows both Mauer's actions and those searching for him. During this same time Magozzi is getting ready to retire to stay home with Grace MacBride (a member of Monkeewrench) and their daughter, Elizabeth. These are all well known characters for those who have been following the series and fans will be pleased to see them again.

The Deepest Cut will be best appreciated by Monkeewrench fans and those who have read the previous book in the series, Ice Cold Heart. Thanks to Crooked Lane Books for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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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.