Thank you Netgalley for the advance reader copy of The Devil You Know by P. J. Tracy in exchange for an honest review. This was the third book in the series and I really should have gone back and read the first two books before I attempted this one. It wasn't a standalone novel and I got a bit confused with the relationships between people, but I'm sure if I read the previous books I would have really enjoyed it. A good detective novel.

As a long-time PJ Tracy fan, I look forward to each new book and this one did not disappoint. LAPD Detective Margaret (Maggie) Nolan returns, investigating the death of beloved and heart-throb, Evan Hobbes. Evan's body is discovered in a landslide on the Pacific Coast Highway following a major storm and smallish earthquake, and while it is clear he started at the top of the adjacent cliff, where his agent's sister had hosted a party the night before, it is not immediately clear whether his death was an accident, or murder. Evan had recently been targeted by a malicious "deep fake", video, suggesting he wasn't so beloved by all. When another body turns up that is obviously a case of murder and seems to be related to Evan's death, Maggie and her partner, Al Crawford, find themselves working with multiple jurisdictions, trying to figure out what's going on. Although I did figure most of it out myself before the reveal, this did not detract from my enjoyment of the book. The Devil You Know is a solid police procedural. Readers will probably get more enjoyment out of the characters if they have read the previous books in the series but the story stands on its own strengths.

Detective Maggie Nolan is once again solving the mystery in The Devil You Know by P.J. Tracy. Captures the Hollywood actor's intrigue and lifestyle.

This is the third book in the series with LA Detective Margaret Nolan, and this time it is concerned with the rich and famous. It seemed a little slow in the first few chapters, but after a few short chapters, it got much more exciting. A child porn video goes viral and it stars Disney movie star Evan Hobbes. Evan claims it is a fake, but his agency is ready to fire him. When an earthquake causes a rockslide in Malibu, Evan's body is found in the rubble. Nolan needs to find out if it is an accident, a murder, or a suicide. The previous night there was a big party at the home of the Disney Movie Chair, David Baum and his wife Essie, just above the rock slide. Did Evan fall from there? There are several fragile relationships among people involved. Essie's brother Seth, was Hobbs' agent. Seth and his boss, Becca (who is a friend of Essie) do not get along. Becca is ready to fire Hobbes, and Seth suddenly drops his current girl friend for an old flame who is a movie star.

Then, David Baum is found naked at his other Beach House in Santa Barbara, shot in the back of his head. An unidentified woman is also found outside the home probably shot with the same gun, but in the face! Although this is being handled with the Santa Barbara police, the killings are probably related, so the police and the FBI confer. Meanwhile, the FBI quickly says the porn video is deepfaked, and is working to find who ordered it's making on the dark web, and who actually made it.

Along the way, Nolan beginning a relationship with another cop, and is working with Al Crawford. They are a good team, and the author keeps the reader guessing. I couldn't put the book down as I got near the end and would rate it at 4.5 stars.

Detective Margaret Nolan and her partner, Detective Al Crawford catch the case of a Hollywood star, Evan Hobbes, who is found dead in the rubble of a rockslide on the California coastline. Hobbes was being released by his studio as the result of an apparent deepfake video accusing him of some nasty stuff. But his autopsy reveals that the rockslide did not kill him - he was already dead. Thus begin a story of numerous intertwined relationships between Hollywood producers, agents, and actresses that becomes very complicated. Throw in a story line about Sam Easton, an Afghanistan veteran suffering from PTSD (who has been in the earlier books in the series) that just didn’t seem to add to the story. I will give you that the ending was a bit of a surprise. This is the 3rd book in Tracy’s Detective Nolan series, and I have said the same things about the earlier books. The story takes a long time to develop and there are so many characters and so much jumping around in the story that when I had to stop reading and came back later, I was pretty lost. This became more and more frustrating as I read the book. I was a huge fan of the mother/daughter team that gave us the Monkeewrench series, and I admire Traci Lambrecht for continuing to write using the pen name after her mother passed away. The earlier books were fun to read - this one was just too much work to stay in the story. I thank Minotaur Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read the ARC of this book.

The Devil You Know is the third book in a series. Since I haven’t read the first two books in the series, I was left feeling a little lost. I felt like details were missing and character info wasn’t always clear. I think if I had read the other two books first, I would have had a better idea of what was going on and I would have felt more connected to the characters.

Even with no background knowledge, it was still an enjoyable detective novel..

Unfortunately, The Devil You Know didn't quite make it for me. I didn't realize that this novel was the third in a series until I added it to my Goodreads list. However, since I've read quite a few novels midway through a series, I thought The Devil You Know could be one that I could read as a standalone. I was mistaken.

I was lost from the get-go since a majority of the characters were all established from the previous novels. That being said, I was floundering, trying desperately to get some bearing. It felt as though I got plopped into the middle of a movie with an expectation to figure out the beginning.

Though I generally read at least 30 - 33% of a novel before casting judgement, I just couldn't do it this time. One unfortunate star.

I received a digital ARC from St. Martin's Press through NetGalley. The review herein is completely my own and contains my honest thoughts and opinions.

The Devil You Know is the third installment of the Margaret Nolan series. I read it as a stand-alone and felt it would have been a more compelling read with a better knowledge of the characters' relationships and back stories. The number of characters and wordy language in the first half of the book slowed the story, but the second half accelerated to a fast and suspenseful read. Detective Nolan and partner Al Crawford take on the investigation of a Hollywood murder and the thrills are amped up as the body count increases. The dark side of Hollywood is exposed as the detectives dig deep into the lives of the victims and host of suspects. Hollywood is not all glamor in The Devil You Know. I found the ending satisfying and enjoyed the characters. Thank you, Netgalley, and publisher for this ARC.

Thank you to the author, publisher and Net Galley for providing a free ebook ARC edition of this title in exchange for my review.

This is book 3 in a series, and seems to be related to an older, longer series as well. As this is the first book in either series I've read, I felt like I was missing some details, not catching onto some characters as much as I should have. I may have enjoyed the book more had I read others related to it.

That being said, it was an enjoyable detective story, entertaining, easy to read and sometimes hard to put down. May go back and start from the beginning for more details.

3 stars for 'I liked it'

Another excellent tale with Detective Maggie Nolan. The story is told from multiple points of view as the cast of characters reveal the plot. No loan and her partner are. Solving a series of interconnected murder sin Hollywood. The plot unravels as each clue is discovered. There are characters from the previous book as well as new ones who add to the interesting and page turning status of this story. It is a story that raises a lot of questions some of which the answers will surprise you.

I wish I’d known this was 3rd in a series but most detective series you don’t need to read in order to understand… a celebrity dies after a video scandal and it’s up to our leading detective to figure out if this was murder or not… definite slow burn with a lot of POV and characters you need to learn. I enjoyed it but wasn’t as invested as I would have liked to be.

This is the third in the series featuring LAPD Detective Margaret Nolan; having read and enjoyed the first two, I was happy to be approved for a pre-release copy of this one. My initial reaction after finishing it is that I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the other two, but the difference is negligible and I'm pretty sure came simply because there's a bit of an overload of characters in this one.

Tapping into technology trends, highly successful actor Evan Hobbes, who has been "outed" as a pedophile in a deep fake video, is found at the bottom of a rockslide in Malibu. Conventional wisdom says an accident or even suicide, given the fake video's damage to his career, but closer investigation reveals that murder goeth before the fall. His agent, Seth Lehman, is shattered by Hobbes's death, but he's too busy fighting with his over-the-top witchy agency boss, Rebecca Wodehouse. All of them, plus a glamorous movie star, were at the posh home of a Disney exec when Hobbes went over the hill, and while everyone, including the exec's wife, seem distraught, Nolan and her competent and very likable partner Al Crawford are pretty sure the killer came from their ranks. Complicating matters is that just about every character is connected to another one (or two, or three) - Lehman, for instance, is the brother of the Disney executive's wife; as for who's sleeping with whom, well, I pretty much lost track after awhile.

Meantime, a side story follows happenings in the life of Nolan's friend Sam Easton (familiar to those who have read previous books), who still suffers from PTSD but is getting his life together and even considering a job with the LAPD. Nolan's case heats up when a second character turns up dead (with an M.O. similar to the Hobbes case). The case sends Nolan and Crawford all over their not-so-little section of California to find pieces that hopefully will come together to make the puzzle whole and makes her yearn for Remy, her own person of interest, who's away to take care of personal business. All in all, a never-a-dull-moment story that ends with a twist. Thanks to the publisher, via NetGalley, for the opportunity to read and review a pre-release copy. Well done!

My first experience with LAPD Detective Margaret Nolan and perhaps that is part of my problem with this book being #3 of the series.

Detective Nolan is a hardened, experienced woman on the LAPD force borne of time with the men in the department as well as the layers of LA society.

First, I felt the book gets a slow start with excessive use of descriptive adjectives, then lost me several times in the sheer volume of characters being introduced and advanced vocabulary in some cases slowing progress to look up the word.

The death of a popular and well-known actor is determined homicide (not accident), followed by a multiple pile up of bodies. The pace increases somewhat as the sixteen-syllable words decrease, but still I could find no way to engage and lost the thread several times.

It doesn’t take long to discern the guilty party but the narrative proceeds in somewhat of a grind. The focus tends to scatter when I wanted to concentrate on the whodunit.

I usually enjoy police procedurals—perhaps this was a bit over-cerebral for me and those who enjoy a twisty, intelligent crime thriller will find challenging and engaging. 3.5 stars

I read about 15% of this book and gave it up. Too many characters doing different things from the previous chapter and I had to keep turning back to re-read.

Thanks for an advance copy. I wish I had enjoyed it more.

This is my first time reading P. J. Tracy. I did not know going in that this novel was third in a series, but I soon figured out that some of these characters had a backstory I didn't know anything about.

The first four chapters, I was hopelessly lost. Each chapter began with focus on a different character, with no apparent connection between any of them. It was very hard to keep the characters straight when there is no common thread at the beginning to keep you grounded to the story.

The writing is good, if overwrought. Lots of paragraph after paragraph of characters thoughts/feelings/motivations/memories, etc. It was a hard slog to get through and at times verged on boring. The author really likes to use words that are not usually in everyday conversations. We get it, you know your vocabulary, but it would be much easier for the reader if you brought it down a notch and stuck to language that people use in everyday speech. An example (just 2 sentences): "It was a monomania, an indefatigable feature of her personality, and the most influential in her repertory of behavior. The primary manifestation was a nebulous sense of hopelessness, loneliness, and despair that always smoldered and sometimes flared." Or she could have just said the character was never happy.

The plot was ok, but again, pretty convoluted in the beginning. The characters were, one and all, unlikeable to the nth degree. Sam is introduced early on, and mentioned several times throughout the book, but I still have no idea why he is in there as, as far as I could tell, he added nothing to the solving of the mystery.

The ending was, odd. Oh, we find out who the killer is, and it's intimated that they will get their just desserts, but it still felt unfinished somehow. This just wasn't a book for me.

I always like books that move fast and has a story that flows. This book had it all. I have read a few of her books and I will say that I have to get the first 2 in this series so I can know the characters a little better.

Wowwwww, y’all. This book took me on a wild ride! The suspense and thrill the whole way throughout was intense. Must read!

Eh. The Devil You Know was an okay mystery/thriller, but not nearly as good as PJ Tracy's other books.

Margaret Nolan is investigating the death of celebrity Evan Hobbes. Someone released a video of him as a child molester, bombing his career as a Disney star. He swore it was a deepfake, and experts agreed with him, but even a hint of scandal can crater a career. At a party the night after the video was released, he was in an altercation, then fell (or was pushed) off the cliff behind the home of his friend, Essie.

The story is told from the perspective of Nolan, Hobbe's agent, Seth Lehman, as well as a few other characters. Everyone and everything is interconnected, but the story itself just never really caught my attention. I didn't connect with the characters, and there wasn't the tension I expected that was always in Tracy's Monkeewrench books.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance copy of this book.

This is a slow burn mystery/ police procedural set in Hollywood. I liked the celebrity culture, and how Nolan, our main character and detective, sets out to solve the murder of an actor allegedly a victim of a deepfake video accusing him of sexual crimes. And the body count only grows from there. I appreciated the modern day subculture, characterization, and multiple povs in this novel! Perfect if you’re looking for a quick, fun read!

Most people know the glamor of Los Angeles, but also earthquakes are fairly normal there. Det. Nolan is asked to investigate a body of a popular actor, discovered after an earthquake. She has to find out what killed him, but soon other bodies turn up and makes her investigation even more difficult.
This was the third book in a series and I had not read the previous books, so am unsure whether or not this is a stand alone or part of a continuing story. I did find the number of different characters rather hard to keep up with.
I thank the author, publisher and Netgalley for my ARC in exchange for my honest review.