Monkeewrench Mysteries

In this electrifying debut, the slaying of an old couple in small-town America looks like a one-off act of brutal retribution. But at the same time, in Minneapolis, teams of detectives scramble to stop a sickeningly inventive serial killer striking again in a city paralysed by fear. When the two separate investigations converge on an isolated Catholic boarding school, decades-old secrets begin to fall away. It seems an old killer has resurfaced. Yet still the killer's real identity remains dangerously out of reach....

People are dying for the new computer game by the software company Monkeewrench. Literally. With Serial Killer Detective out in limited release, the real-life murders of a jogger and a young woman have already mimicked the first two scenarios in the game. But Grace McBride and her eccentric Monkeewrench partners are caught in a vise. If they tell the Minneapolis police of the link between their game and the murders, they'll shine a spotlight on the past they thought they had erased-and the horror they thought they'd left behind.

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.

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 with two brutal homicides taking place in one awful night, the crime drought ends—not with a trickle, but with an eventual torrent. Who would kill Morey Gilbert, a man without an enemy, a man who might as well have been a saint?

Computer game company founders Grace MacBride and Annie Belinsky—along with Wisconsin deputy Sharon Mueller—are en route to Green Bay, following reports of a serial killer, when their car breaks down deep in the northern woods. A short walk through the forest leads them to the eerily quiet town of Four Corners, where they find severed phone lines and a complete absence of any life. But the quiet is deceptive. Before they know it, they witness a horrifying double murder—and discover that this is only the beginning of a race to save their own lives… and countless others.

It should have been a simple journey - a drive from Minneapolis to Green Bay, Wisconsin. But a couple of unplanned detours lead Grace MacBride, Annie Belinsky and police deputy Sharon Mueller deep in the northern woods, far from civilization and a mobile phone signal. Then the car breaks down. The nervous search for a landline and a mechanic leads the women to Four Corners, a sleepy crossroads town. And place they soon wish they'd never stumbled on - because something terrible happened in Four Corners....

With the holiday's over and the long cold winter looming, January can be a bleak month in Minneapolis. So what better way to bring a little cheer to the good people of the city than sponsoring an old-fashioned snowman-building contest? In a matter of hours, a local park is filled with the innocent laughter of children and their frosty creations. But things take an awful turn when the dead bodies of police officers are discovered inside two of the snowmen—sending the entire department and Detectives Magozzi and Rolseth on high alert.

Minneapolis, winter's first white flakes; a park full of snowmen. But the layers of packed snow hide a ghoulish surprise.... First, the bodies of two cops are found inside the snowmen, and then a day later, in the countryside to the north, Sheriff Iris Rikker makes a similarly shocking discovery. Soon Detectives Gino and Magozzi are sent north through the worst blizzard Minnesota's seen for years to find what else links the investigations. But some secrets you don't want to uncover. And as the cases unravel, it seems snowmen aren't the only ones with something to hide....

It's eighty-five degrees in the shade when Minneapolis detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth pull into the MPD parking garage. They're driving a tricked-out Caddy, repossessed from a low-level drug dealer. It's not a Beemer or a Mercedes, but it's got GPS, air-conditioning, and power seats with more positions than the Kama Sutra. Things are heating up inside the station-house, too. The bomb squad's off to investigate another suspicious package at the mall, and kids are beating the crap out of one another and posting it on YouTube.

Call it murdertube...Minneapolis homicide cops Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth fish a murdered drag queen out of the Mississippi. Another day, another corpse. Except the victim's death throes quickly appear in a video posted online. And there are other videos, other murders. Unable to trace who is posting the videos, the cops turn to Grace MacBride and her crew of eccentric computer mavericks. But as the bodies and videos stack up, the team desperately try and answer a terrifying question: Is this the work of a lone individual?

A missing girl is found dead in a parking lot, her throat cut. Two young immigrants are gunned down in their apartment. And with each passing day the body count rises.... For Minneapolis homicide detectives Gino and Magozzi it seems that this autumn the bodies are falling faster than the leaves. With few leads to go on, yet evidence that these killings are linked to others taking place in other cities, the pair turn to Grace McBride, maverick computer analyst.

Off the Florida coast, Grace MacBride, partner in software company Monkeewrench, thwarts an assassination attempt on a retired FBI agent. A few hours afterward in Minneapolis, a young girl’s throat is slashed. Later that day, two men are killed execution style. Minneapolis Homicide detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth struggle to link the three crimes, but the wave of murders across the country has only just begun. Piece by piece, evidence accumulates, pointing to a suspect—and a motive—that shocks them to the core. It puts the entire Midwest on high alert ...

On a cold winter's night in Minneapolis, two friends are brutally murdered on opposite sides of the city. It's clear to homicide detectives Gino and Magozzi that the men were targets - but why? As Gino and Magozzi begin to uncover evidence, the clues rapidly start to disappear. Lost websites and missing CCTV footage lead them once more to Grace MacBride and her eccentric team of computer analysts - the only ones who can help.

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.

When homicide detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth are called to a crime scene in a heavily-wooded city park, the setting is all too familiar. And when they discover a playing card on the victim's body, their worst fears are confirmed: There's a serial killer operating in the city for the first time in years. As the violence accelerates in Minneapolis, Magozzi and Rolseth soon realize their killer is planning to complete the deck, and they enlist Grace MacBride and her unconventional partners at Monkeewrench Software to help stop the rampage.

A young woman is murdered in a park in Minneapolis. When detectives Gino and Magozzi discover a playing card near the body, they recognise the work of a serial killer who has already struck the city once before. But it's worse than they imagined. The card is the four of spades; the last victim's was the ace: it seems they're already two murders behind. Once again working with Grace MacBride and her team of analysts, they discover a web of evidence stretching back into the past.

Gregory Norwood is Minnesota's most beloved philanthropist, and the story of his son's overdose was splashed across the front page of all the papers. When a photojournalist sets out to get a candid shot of the highly successful businessman on the one-year anniversary of his son's death, he's shocked to find Norwood dead with a smoking gun in his hand. The city is devastated, and Minneapolis detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth are called in to handle the delicate case. It should be open and shut, but something is not right. Norwood's death is no suicide.

Gregory Norwood, wealthy businessman and close friend of Minnesota's leading candidate for Governor, is found dead on the first anniversary of his son's drug overdose. It seems clear to Detectives Gino and Magozzi that grief drove him to suicide. Until they realize that this left-handed man seems to have used his right hand to pull the trigger. And they find the second body.

On a bitterly cold winter night, Kelly Ramage leaves her suburban home, telling her husband she's going to meet a friend. She never comes back. When her body is discovered, murdered in what seems to be a sex game gone horribly wrong, Detectives Gino and Magozzi take the case, expecting to find a flirtatious trail leading straight to the killer.

It's a bitter winter in Minnesota - too cold to kill. There hasn't been a murder for a month, but the lull quickly comes to an end for Detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth, when they're called to the gruesome homicide of Kelly Ramage. Found in a friend's vacant house, this was no random attack, and clues reveal that she was living a very dangerous secret life.