Off the Grid

At the start of the exciting sixth Monkeewrench novel from the pseudonymous Tracy (a mother-daughter writing team), Minneapolis computer entrepreneur Grace MacBride and FBI cybercrime expert John Smith, with whom she worked on a case in 2010’s Shoot to Thrill, are sailing on his boat off the Florida Keys. When two men sneak aboard one night intent on killing John, Grace shoots them both dead and dumps their bodies over the side. Meanwhile, back in Minneapolis, a 15-year-old Native American girl, who’s been missing from her reservation in northern Minnesota, turns up with her throat cut in a vacant lot, the apparent victim of a kidnapping ring made up of Somali immigrants who exploit Native American girls for the sex trade. The execution-style murders of first two, then three Somali men that follow prove to be part of a larger national pattern. The two main story lines converge in a gripping finale in the Minnesota woods. Agent: Ellen Geiger, Frances Goldin Literary Agency. (Aug.)