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Summary and Reviews of Live Bait by P.J. Tracy

Live Bait by P.J. Tracy

Live Bait

by P.J. Tracy
  • Critics' Consensus:
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  • First Published:
  • May 1, 2004, 320 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Apr 2005, 400 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

Filled with intelligent, well-drawn characters, sparkling, snappy dialogue, and razor-sharp plotting, P. J. Tracy's stylish, high-voltage new nail-biter will have readers on the edge of their seats.

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 when elderly Morey Gilbert is found dead in the plant nursery he runs with his wife, Lily, the crime drought ends--not with a trickle, but with a torrent. Who would kill Morey, a man without an enemy, a man who might as well have been a saint? His tiny, cranky little wife is no help, and may even be a suspect; his estranged son, Jack, an infamous ambulance-chasing lawyer, has his own enemies; and his son-in-law, former cop Marty Pullman, is so depressed over his wife's death a year earlier he's ready to kill himself, but not Morey. The number of victims--all elderly-grows, and the city is fearful once again. Can Grace MacBride's cold case-solving software program somehow find the missing link?

Filled with intelligent, well-drawn characters, sparkling, snappy dialogue, and razor-sharp plotting, P. J. Tracy's stylish, high-voltage new nail-biter will have readers on the edge of their seats.

Chapter 1

It was just after sunrise and still raining when Lily found her husband's body. He was lying faceup on the asphalt apron in front of the greenhouse, eyes and mouth open, collecting rainwater.

Even dead, he looked quite handsome in this position, gravity pulling back the loose, wrinkled skin of his face, smoothing away eighty-four years of pain and smiles and worries.

Lily stood over him for a moment, wincing when the raindrops plopped noisily onto his eyes.

I hate eyedrops.

Morey, hold still. Stop blinking. Stop blinking, she says, while she pours chemicals into my eyes.

Hush. It's not chemicals. Natural tears, see? It says so right on the bottle.

You expect a blind man to read?

A little grain of sand in your eye and suddenly you're blind. Big tough guy. And they're not natural tears. What do they do? Go to funerals and hold little bottles under crying people? No, they mix chemicals together and call it natural tears. It's ...

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Reviews

Media Reviews

Entertainment Weekly
...Bait is quick-witted and -paced, with a snappy plot that incorporates romance, gore, and a surprise ending. ... A-.

Booklist - Connie Fletcher
If a police procedural can be both disturbing and fun-filled, this is it.

Publishers Weekly
With generous doses of humor and suspense, this sharp, satisfying thriller will rivet readers from the start.

Kirkus Reviews
...Tracy returns in surprising detail to the idiosyncratic formula of her striking debut--Minneapolis cops and computer nerds battling the serial killer of a mysterious group of strangers--with more gravitas and more heartfelt revelations substituting for the wit, antic byplay, and originality of the prototype. If it's anything like Tracy's first two, Minnesotans may want to duck and cover before her third hits the bookshelves.

Reader Reviews

Jean Smith

Live Bait
If you have read P. J. Tracy's Monkeewrench, you will not want to miss this second book. It is just as exciting. It has twists and turns and surprises until the very end. You will not want to put it down. Magozzi and Gino, with the help of the ...   Read More

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Beyond the Book



P.J. Tracy is the pseudonym of P.J. Lambrecht and Traci Lambrecht, a mother-daughter writing team.

P. J. Lambrecht describes herself as 'a college dropout with one of the largest collections of sweatpants in the world.' She had her first short story published in The Saturday Evening Post when Traci was eight and has been 'a moderately successfully freelance writer ever since'.

Traci Lambrecht graduated with a Russian Studies major from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, where she also studied voice. Her aspirations of becoming a spy were dashed when the Cold War ended, so she instead attempted briefly and ...

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