Off the Grid by P.J. TracyMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
The newest installment in the Monkeewrench series was released sometime this past summer. Lucky me was able to get my hands on a untarnished audiobook! No skips, no scratches, new new new CD's. Hooray!
From Goodreads.com: On a sailboat ten miles off the Florida coast, Grace MacBride, partner in Monkeewrench Software, thwarts an assassination attempt on retired FBI agent John Smith. A few hours later, in Minneapolis, a fifteen-year-old girl is discovered in a vacant lot, her throat slashed. Later that day, two young men are found in their home a few blocks away, killed execution-style. The next morning, the dead bodies of three more men turn up, savagely murdered in the same neighborhood.
As Minneapolis homicide detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth struggle to link the three crimes, they learn that there have been similar murders in other cities around the United States. Piece by piece, evidence accumulates, pointing to a suspect that shocks them to the core, uncovering a motive that puts the entire Midwest on high alert and Monkeewrench in the direct line of fire. Before it's all over, Grace and her partners, Annie, Roadrunner, and Harley Davidson, find themselves in the middle of a shocking collision of violence on a remote northern Minnesota reservation, fighting for their lives.
We start the book with a series of murders in Minneapolis that, while at first glance seem unrelated, but are soon discovered to be connected to something much farther reaching. While Gino and Leo are scratching their heads over the bizarre killings, Grace McBride is somewhere off the coast of Florida with retired FBI agent John Smith on a three month cruise. We see a Grace transformed, briefly, before someone tries to kill John ala pirate style.
And then everyone is off and running. Literally. It was reminiscent of the flight in book #3 which found Grace and Annie running around the woods in Northern Wisconsin. And similar to book #3, we are dealing with a terrorist threat that revolves around one person who was doing a bit too much snooping.
While I found the book enjoyable, I felt it really didn't have much substance. The plot seemed a bit fantastic for the setting (Minneapolis and Northern MN). The ending - which I won't give away - was overly predictable and should come as no surprise to someone used to reading this genre.
And my biggest peeve is almost no character development. I like a series that moves the characters forward not only in a spatial sense, but also in personal growth. I just don't see that happening in this series. It's like the authors are afraid to move away from what made the Monkeewrench crew the Monkeewrench crew. People grow and change in real life, events of the magnitude these characters go through are life changing. Yet no change. A bit frustrating.
Recommended if you like the Monkeewrench series and books set in Minnesota.
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