P.J. Tracy Snow Blind

Snow Blind

P.J. Tracy

Putnam, August 2006, $29.95, 320 pp.

ISBN 039915339X

Minneapolis homicide detectives Leo Magozzi and Gina Rolseth are participating in a snow festival. They discover two of their brother officers shot to death inside two of the snowmen. A third Snowman with a murdered body inside is found in Dundas County with the victim is identified as Steve Doyle, a Minneapolis parole officer. His last appointment was with new client Kurt Weinbeck, a repeat violent offender who almost killed his wife.

The address where his spouse lives is in Doyle's missing file and police feel Kurt has it and is heading there to kill her. Leo and Gino head up to Dundas County to see if there is any evidence linking Kurt to their two dead officers. They also want to offer Kurt's wife police protection but when they arrive at Bitteroot, a heavily fortified secured area that is home and workplace to four hundred women, she turns them down. Each woman living there is armed and all are willing to protect the other. When a fourth man is discovered in a snowman in Pittsburg, they believe they have a copycat killer. As Kurt is making his way to Bitteroot and the investigation by Leo and Gino stalls, the Monkeewrench gang is working their computer magic that sends the two cops back to Bitteroot.

Leo and Gino are the stars of the latest Monkeewrench novel in which the computer hotshots play an important but background role. While DEAD RUN was more of an action thriller, SNOW BLIND is an exciting and cleverly constructed police procedural with the trademark P.J. Tracy humor. This mother-daughter writing team has written a tale that evokes the national conscience with a grim look at one of society's ills: spousal abuse.

Harriet Klausner