On September 10th, 2019, Ice Cold Heart, the latest Monkeewrench novel from acclaimed New York Times bestseller P.J. Tracy, will hit bookstores everywhere.
P.J. Tracy, of course, is the pseudonym for mother-daughter co-authors P. J. and Traci Lambrecht. Sadly, P.J. Lambrecht passed away in 2016. Traci now continues to write the series, published by Crooked Lande Books, by herself.
Originally introduced in the 2003 novel Monkeewrench, Grace MacBride—founder of Monkeewrench, a game software company, in Minneapolis, Minnesota—has gone on to star in nine novels to date. Ice Cold Heart, which follows last year’s successful The Guilty Dead, is the tenth book in the series—and features a “dark and ugly conspiracy that reaches deep in the safety of homes.” See the cover art and plot details below.
Minneapolis detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth join Grace MacBride and Monkeewrench to uncover a dark and ugly conspiracy that reaches deep into the safety of homes in this latest electrifying thriller from New York Times bestselling author P. J. Tracy.
It’s a bitter winter in Minnesota–too cold to kill. There hasn’t been a murder for a month, but the lull quickly comes to an end for Detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth, when they’re called to the gruesome homicide of Kelly Ramage. Found in a friend’s vacant house, this was no random attack, and clues reveal that she was living a very dangerous secret life.
Magozzi and Gino trace her steps back to an art gallery where she was last seen alive. The gallery seems like a dead end, but the art is disturbing and exploitative. It may very well be inspiring a sadistic killer, because in this instance, art doesn’t imitate life, it imitates death.
Tipped off about a year-old murder that is a mirror-image of Kelly’s crime scene, Gino and Magozzi enlist the aid of Grace MacBride and her eccentric, tech genius partners in Monkeewrench Software to help them decipher the digital trail that might connect the cases.
As coincidences emerge, Magozzi, Gino, and the team have to work around the clock at breakneck pace to unravel a series of clues that form the framework of a larger, more sweeping, and insidious conspiracy than any of them could have imagined. Is Kelly the last person to die or just the most recent? And is there any way to stop it?
P. J. Tracy was the pseudonym of mother-daughter writing team P. J. and Traci Lambrecht. Traci spent most of her childhood riding and showing horses. She graduated with a Russian Studies major from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, where she also studied voice. Her aspirations of becoming a spy were dashed when the Cold War ended, so she began writing to finance her annoying habits of travel and singing in rock bands. Much to her mother’s relief, she finally realized that the written word was her true calling. They had a long, prolific career together in multiple genres before P. J.’s passing in December 2016. Traci continues to write.
Ice Cold Heart is now available for pre-order wherever books are sold.
Praised as “one of today’s finest book reviewers” by New York Times bestselling author Gayle Lynds, Ryan Steck (“The Godfather of the thriller genre” — Ben Coes) has “quickly established himself as the authority on mysteries and thrillers” (Author A.J. Tata). Steck also works full-time as a freelance editor and pens a monthly thriller column for CrimeReads. For more information, be sure to follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He currently lives in Southwest Michigan with his wife and their six children.