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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
May 2004, 320 pages
Paperback:
Apr 2005, 400 pages
Filled with intelligent, well-drawn characters, sparkling, snappy dialogue, and razor-sharp plotting, P. J. Tracy's stylish, high-voltage new nail-biter will have readers on the edge of their seats.
Minneapolis detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth are bored. Ever since they solved the Monkeewrench case, the Twin Cities have been in a murder-free dry spell, as people no longer seem interested in killing one another. But when elderly Morey Gilbert is found dead in the plant nursery he runs with his wife, Lily, the crime drought ends--not with a trickle, but with a torrent. Who would kill Morey, a man without an enemy, a man who might as well have been a saint? His tiny, cranky little wife is no help, and may even be a suspect; his estranged son, Jack, an infamous ambulance-chasing lawyer, has his own enemies; and his son-in-law, former cop Marty Pullman, is so depressed over his wife's death a year earlier he's ready to kill himself, but not Morey. The number of victims--all elderly-grows, and the city is fearful once again. Can Grace MacBride's cold case-solving software program somehow find the missing link?
Filled with intelligent, well-drawn characters, sparkling, snappy dialogue, and razor-sharp plotting, P. J. Tracy's stylish, high-voltage new nail-biter will have readers on the edge of their seats.
Chapter 1
It was just after sunrise and still raining when Lily found her husband's body. He was lying faceup on the asphalt apron in front of the greenhouse, eyes and mouth open, collecting rainwater.
Even dead, he looked quite handsome in this position, gravity pulling back the loose, wrinkled skin of his face, smoothing away eighty-four years of pain and smiles and worries.
Lily stood over him for a moment, wincing when the raindrops plopped noisily onto his eyes.
I hate eyedrops.
Morey, hold still. Stop blinking. Stop blinking, she says, while she pours chemicals into my eyes.
Hush. It's not chemicals. Natural tears, see? It says so right on the bottle.
You expect a blind man to read?
A little grain of sand in your eye and suddenly you're blind. Big tough guy. And they're not natural tears. What do they do? Go to funerals and hold little bottles under crying people? No, they mix chemicals together and call it natural tears. It's ...
P.J. Tracy is the pseudonym of P.J. Lambrecht and Traci Lambrecht, a mother-daughter writing team.
P. J. Lambrecht describes herself as 'a college dropout with one of the largest collections of sweatpants in the world.' She had her first short story published in The Saturday Evening Post when Traci was eight and has been 'a moderately successfully freelance writer ever since'.
Traci Lambrecht 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 instead attempted briefly and
...
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