Live Bait by PJ Tracy

Description from Amazon:

When elderly Morey Gilbert is found, lying dead in the grass by his wife, Lily, it’s a tragedy, but it shouldn’t have been a shock - old people die. But when she finds a bullet hole in his skull, the blood washed away by heavy rain, sadness turns to fear. It looks like an execution...

Soon a whole city is fearful as new victims are found, killed with the same cold precision. All elderly. All apparently blameless.

Detectives Gino and Magozzi, race to uncover a connection and their best hope of doing so may be Grace McBride, beautiful, damaged survivor of an earlier killing spree. And the answers, it seems, are buried in a terrible past.

 

I enjoyed the first book so thought I’d continue with this second one, but I must say I didn’t find it as good as the previous one. Considering it is the second book in the Monkeewrench series, it felt like they didn’t feature as much as a group in this. The premise sounds promising – elderly people being murdered with no obvious connection. Until the Nazi camp tattoos they have that link them somehow.

 Morey’s son-in-law, Marty, watched his own wife get killed in front of him without being able to stop it from happening. He has spiralled into a trap of alcohol and is ready to kill himself. Luckily, he is prevented just before this happens, only to find out his father-in-law, who is apparently the saint of all saints, has been murdered. Marty must choose whether to spiral further or rise up and help the detectives solve why the murders occurred and who did it.

Magozzi is still besotted with Grace, and Grace is softening ever so slightly towards him. But she has news for him that could change the dynamic of their relationship. The Monkeewrench group have set off to apply their new programming skills elsewhere, but Grace is able to use part of their genius programming to help the case, so they are only touched on briefly. However, yet again, Annie is spoken of as fat and obese and can turn heads wherever she goes. It’s just too many times!

As the detectives delve deeper into Morey’s son – a rather unhinged personal injury lawyer – it turns out he may know more than he is letting on. And the connection isn’t just about these bodies, but extends around the globe.

The idea behind the killings was not new and I felt you’d really have to buy into this just as a story without thinking about the improbabilities of pulling this off. As usual, there is a twist at the end and some of the next book that takes up space.

It wasn’t bad... just not as good as the first and put me off reading on in the series.