David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "serial-killer-eccentric-art"
Ice Cold Heart
Minneapolis Police Department detectives Gino Rolseth and Leo Magozzi investigate the torture and murder of Kelly Ramage who was last seen at an eccentric art museum.
In junction with a cyber security company, Monkeywrench, the detectives match up this murder with another similar one in Los Angeles. The same artist was displaying his work in LA.
There are lots of demonstrators outside the museum complaining about exploiting the brutalization of women. One of them is kidnapped; she just happens to be the sister of the dead woman in LA.
One of the problems I had with the book was that so many characters are introduced in the first part of the book that they're hard to keep track of. One of them was Petra who was so depressed she went out into the Minnesota Winter, ignoring the warning not to stay out for longer than thirty minutes. She almost dies of hypotermia; she is saved by one of the Monkeywrench hackers. But I had no idea how she connected to the main plot line. Turns out she's investigating a Bosnian thug who's in the country illegally.
One of the conventions of mystery writing is that the author must show the killer or killers well before the actual resolution. P.J. Tracy does a fantastic job hiding this guy via his oddball personality. He can't possibly be a Bosnian murderer. We also don't know he's got help. One of the red herrings is that the murderer is a good looking charmer who gets the women to go with him willingly. That's not the Bosnian thug. Gino and Leo even know the helper and are completely fooled, as most readers will be.
Leo is also married to one of the cyber experts, Grace MacBride, and they have child together, which also threw me off until it was further explained. This gives the story an added dimension.
If you don't mind paging back and forth trying to find out who a certain character is, this is a great who-done-it. You'll have a hard time ferreting out the killer.
In junction with a cyber security company, Monkeywrench, the detectives match up this murder with another similar one in Los Angeles. The same artist was displaying his work in LA.
There are lots of demonstrators outside the museum complaining about exploiting the brutalization of women. One of them is kidnapped; she just happens to be the sister of the dead woman in LA.
One of the problems I had with the book was that so many characters are introduced in the first part of the book that they're hard to keep track of. One of them was Petra who was so depressed she went out into the Minnesota Winter, ignoring the warning not to stay out for longer than thirty minutes. She almost dies of hypotermia; she is saved by one of the Monkeywrench hackers. But I had no idea how she connected to the main plot line. Turns out she's investigating a Bosnian thug who's in the country illegally.
One of the conventions of mystery writing is that the author must show the killer or killers well before the actual resolution. P.J. Tracy does a fantastic job hiding this guy via his oddball personality. He can't possibly be a Bosnian murderer. We also don't know he's got help. One of the red herrings is that the murderer is a good looking charmer who gets the women to go with him willingly. That's not the Bosnian thug. Gino and Leo even know the helper and are completely fooled, as most readers will be.
Leo is also married to one of the cyber experts, Grace MacBride, and they have child together, which also threw me off until it was further explained. This gives the story an added dimension.
If you don't mind paging back and forth trying to find out who a certain character is, this is a great who-done-it. You'll have a hard time ferreting out the killer.
