Pun Salad

I continue (on my dear sister's recommendation) in my consumption of the "Monkeewrench" series. The "P. J. Tracy" name stands for a mother/daughter writing team; unfortunately the mom passed away back in 2016, but (apparently) the series will continue with the daughter writing solo.

Although the series is called "Monkeewrench" after the software/hacking company that played a major role in the first book, the fine detectives of the Minneapolis Police Department, Magozzi and Rolseth have really taken over the spotlight in the later books. Monkeewrench's main purpose here is to provide a love interest for Magozzi (Grace) and technological dei ex machina as necessary to move the plot along.

Ah, the plot. It revolves around a decades-old evil US government organization, its origins in the development of the H-bomb, devoted to keeping the lid on a majorly innovative secret weapon: a method to generate destructive electromagnetic pulses at will, knocking out an enemy's electrical infrastructure. And "keeping the lid on" involves murdering anyone who just might be on the verge of blabbing, or finding out, about this. Rough stuff!

This isn't really a spoiler; you get the gist of if in the first few dozen pages.

Unfortunately, the book is below average for the series. It seems heavily padded out to the (no doubt contractually obligated) 350 pages. The plot mover isn't particularly credible, sorry. I have negligible warm feelings toward Our Federal Government, but I'm pretty sure they're not capable of orchestrating this combination of evil ruthlessness and secrecy.

But (anyway) Evilorg.gov makes the fatal mistake of carrying out some homicides in Minneapolis, drawing the attention of our heroes. Dumb move on their part.

The authors seem to think our current nuclear arsenal doesn't contain H-bombs, by the way. Somebody should have checked that for them.