The Sixth Idea by PJ Tracy (Monkeewrench #7)

The Sixth Idea by P.J. Tracy

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Jacket Blurb:  The peaceful Christmas season in Minneapolis is shattered when two friends, Chuck Spencer and Wally Luntz, scheduled to meet in person for the first time, are murdered on the same night, two hours and several miles apart, dramatically concluding winter vacation for homicide detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth.
           
An hour north of Minneapolis, Lydia Ascher comes home to find two dead men in her basement. When Leo and Gino discover her connection to their current cases, they suspect that she is a target, too. The same day, an elderly, terminally ill man is kidnapped from his home, an Alzheimer’s patient goes missing from his care facility, and a baffling link among all the crimes emerges.
           
This series of inexplicable events sends the detectives sixty years into the past to search for answers—and straight to Grace MacBride’s Monkeewrench, a group of eccentric computer geniuses who devote their time and resources to helping the cops solve the unsolvable. What they find is an unimaginable horror—a dormant Armageddon that might be activated at any moment unless Grace and her partners Annie, Roadrunner, and Harley Davidson, along with Leo and Gino, can find a way to stop it.

Read as an audio book.

I confess, it's been several years since I've read a Monkeewrench book. I had a couple of 'meh' (two star) installments, and a couple of this was interesting enough installments (three stars), and then the next book hadn't been published yet and I forgot about the series.

Until now, when I realized I was about two books behind.

I really enjoyed this installment. I had forgotten how quirky and humorous Harley, Grace, Roadrunner, Annie and Charlie could be. I had forgotten how wry and incredibly insightful into the human psyche Detectives Magozzi and Rolseth were. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this audio book.

Now, that's not to say I didn't have a few issues with a handful of items, because I did. My main contention was with the premise of the murders - our Uber Secret Guardians killing off the creators and the descendants of the Hydrogen bomb because they "might" know something about the Sixth Idea decades after the Cold War had ended...? Especially the descendants? Umm...no. Didn't work for me At. All.

A few too many loose threads left dangling - did Lydia hook up with the Deputy? Was Lydia's and Charlies bumping into each other on the plane a massive coincidence? Did Roadrunner and Annie make it back in time for Christmas?

And, trying not to give away spoilers...did our Uber Secret Guardian's really have to kill everyone off and obliterate the Secret Headquarters? I found that especially disturbing. It was like the Uber Secret Guardians had spent so much time in the closet, that they forgot what daylight looked like (ie, just weren't with the times).

Other than those few items. like I noted, this book pushed all my happy buttons and I found myself sitting in the car just listening to the narration. Magozzi's observations about people and relationships was just so spot on, Rolseth's small mannerisms (the ones Magozzi's kept commenting on) were just perfect, Grace and Magozzi's relationship dance was so much fun to watch, and I liked how Annie and Roadrunner were on the road, yet the reader finds out more about them too.

So, other than the premise upon which the entire plot was based, I greatly enjoyed The Sixth Idea and returning to the Monkeewrench world.



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