In a Hard Wind--A McKenzie Novel

May 1, 2023
When the bulk of the evidence points to his client's guilt, what's an unlicensed private investigator to do? Well, if you're Rushmore McKenzie, a former St. Paul, Minnesota, cop, you just keep digging. Here's the setup: a friend asks McKenzie to take on the case of a woman who's been accused of killing a man. In their small community, the general feeling seems to be that she could have, and probably did, do the deed; she did, after all, threaten him publicly. But McKenzie is guided largely by instinct, and his gut tells him the woman is innocent. Problem is, it's going to be awfully hard to prove that. This is the twentieth McKenzie novel, and while a lot of series have started running out of steam by this point, Housewright and Rushmore show no signs of slowing down. The writing is as crisp as ever, and Rushmore continues to be the kind of guy you wouldn't mind hanging out with (unless you've done something wrong, in which case he will nail you to the wall). Keep 'em coming!

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Starred review from May 15, 2023
Unofficial Minnesota investigator Rushmore McKenzie, who maintains that "I just do favors for my friends," ends up doing a whale of a favor for the friend of a friend of a friend. Sgt. Michael Swenson of the Ramsey County Police has every reason to think that Jeanette "J.C." Carrell killed developer Charles Sainsbury. She'd threatened to kill him before witnesses after Charles' son, William, who runs his company, purchased the Circle, the isolated parcel her home shared with a handful of others, in order to tear down the owners' houses and replace them with some more profitable dwellings; he was found buried in a shallow grave on her land; and her neighbor Katherine Hixson reported seeing J.C. coming down the hill from the gravesite that night carrying a shovel. But Sara Vaneps, J.C.'s dearest friend--whose Alzheimer's-stricken grandfather, Carson Vaneps, apparently sold Sainsbury the Circle without J.C.'s knowledge--is convinced that she's no killer. So McKenzie gets to work and, after several unspectacular rounds of questioning, produces another witness whose statement gets assistant county attorney Ted Kaplan to drop the charges. That's when things get really interesting. For no sooner has the county removed J.C.'s ankle bracelet than she takes a powder, obligingly leaving her phone and identification papers behind, three days before a bulldozer operator discovers two more bodies buried under her gazebo. Now that the authorities have every reason to recapture the woman they just freed, McKenzie goes looking for her too, armed only with the obviously false stories she's told him about her background. The results, however messy and unsatisfactorily wound up, are as powerfully affecting as the structure is original. Housewright's finest hour, bar none.

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