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Twin Cities Thriller

by 10 books in this series
#1 - Want to Play?
#1 - Want to Play?
Want to play a game?

A small American town.

A brutally cold autumn.

A killer is at work.


Two bodies are found; two slayings that the police treat as unrelated. But games-creator Grace MacBride knows different.

The murders are exact copies of those in a game she's designing - one that already has hundreds of eager players.

As the copycat killings mount up, Grace knows that she is both suspect and potential victim.
#2 - Live Bait
#2 - Live Bait
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 Magozzi and Rolseth, 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.

Filled with the same crackling dialogue, pace and rich, vivid characters as the author's debut Want to Play?, PJ Tracy's Live Bait is an electrifying thriller that explores the chilling extremes of evil and retribution.
#3 - Dead Run
#3 - Dead Run
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...

Filled with the same crackling dialogue, pace and rich vivid characters as Want to Play? and Live Bait, Dead Run firmly establishes PJ Tracy as one of the most exciting thriller writers in the world.
#4 - Snow Blind
#4 - Snow Blind
The Dead of Winter...

Minneapolis, winter's first white flakes; a park full of snowmen. But the layers of packed snow hide a goulish 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 ...
#5 - Play to Kill
#5 - Play to Kill
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? Or of several killers who have taken social networking to the darkest extreme. . .
#6 - Two Evils
#6 - Two Evils
A missing teenage girl lies dead in a parking lot. Two young immigrants are killed in their apartment. Three men are found dead in the street nearby.

As the police struggle to establish what's happened, they realize that the deaths may not be as random as they first appear. As the killings continue, homicide detectives Magozzi and Rolseath turn to maverick computer analyst Grace McBride for help, drawing her into an investigation that will threaten her life.

And as the evidence mounts, it reveals terrifying intent. Ultimately, it forces the two detectives to make a dreadful choice: down which path does the lesser of two evils lie . . .
#7 - Cold Kill
#7 - Cold Kill
The 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 the winter vacation for homicide detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth.

This series of inexplicable events sends the detectives sixty years into the past to search for answers - and straight to Grace MacBride's Monkeewrench. What they find is an unimaginable horror - a dormant Armageddon that might be activated at any moment unless Grace, along with Leo and Gino, can find a way to stop it.
#8 - Nothing Stays Buried
#8 - Nothing Stays Buried
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. And there is little time to untangle it: this killer has a taste for blood, and he's intent on playing out the deck . . .
#9 - The Guilty Dead
#9 - The Guilty Dead
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.

As the seemingly open-and-shut case becomes a murder enquiry, the detectives begin to delve into the dark secrets of one of the city's most powerful families. It seems that the murders are not the first in the Norwoods' tragic story - and they won't be the last . . .
#10 - Ice Cold Heart
#10 - Ice Cold Heart
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.

However, Kelly's sinister lover has done a disturbingly good job of hiding his identity. This isn't his first victim - and that she won't be the last...

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