The Devil May Care

Starred review from April 28, 2014
In Edgar-winner Housewright’s exceptional 11th novel featuring unlicensed Twin Cities PI Rushmore McKenzie novel (after 2013’s The Last Kind Word), Riley Brodin, the scion of a wealthy Minnesota family, hires McKenzie to find her new boyfriend, Juan Carlos Navarre, who has gone missing. McKenzie soon discovers that the elusive, enigmatic Juan Carlos, supposedly the son of a Spanish entrepreneur, deceived Riley about his background. At a fancy club to which he was applying for membership, for example, Juan Carlos went out of his way to impress a receptionist that he was worthy of her respect—odd behavior for even a nouveau riche. Meanwhile, a sadistic rapist-murderer is targeting Juan Carlos’s friends and lovers, but soon sets his sights on McKenzie and his client. Capable of extreme violence when provoked, McKenzie is a thoughtful, compassionate judge of the confused and wayward people in his path. Wry humor helps balance the tension in this tale of misguided love and obsession. Agent: Alison Pickard, Alison J. Picard Agency.

May 15, 2014
Ex-St. Paul cop Rushmore McKenzie, who doesn't have a PI license but likes to do favors for friends, takes on a job mainly to annoy a Minnesota millionaire and richly succeeds in doing that but not much more.Entrepreneur Juan Carlos Navarre is too obviously a nouveau-riche immigrant for Riley Brodin's family to take him seriously, except of course as a threat to their darling daughter and granddaughter. But Riley takes her boyfriend seriously enough to be distraught that he's been missing for three days, and she wants McKenzie to look for him. McKenzie isn't enthusiastic until Riley indicates that his search would be a serious poke in the eye to her grandfather Walter Muehlenhaus, the Croesus with whom McKenzie has already crossed swords. Roused to action, he makes the rounds of the people most likely to know what's happened to Navarre-his ancient landlady, Irene Rogers, who owns the palace he's rented; her realtor, Anne Rehmann, whose services to Navarre have gone beyond the usual; and Mary Pat Mullaly, the real owner of the restaurant Navarre told Riley was his. Long before one of these helpful informants is raped and murdered, McKenzie has concluded, "I don't think Navarre is missing. I think he's hiding"-presumably from the tough guys who've staked out his favorite places, dressed in the colors of the notorious Nine Thirty-Seven gang, which passed into oblivion years ago after its chief financial officer ratted out his colleagues and vanished with their treasury. Who's in the greatest danger from the new gang: Navarre, Riles or McKenzie himself?McKenzie, who seems to be channeling the Lew Archer of The Barbarous Coast and Black Money, continues to be more interesting than his cases (Highway 61, 2011, etc.). Maybe he should leave the mystery field and write a memoir or a self-help book.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from May 1, 2014
Housewright's Minnesota private eye doesn't have a license and doesn't need to work, both of which amp up his cleverness at sleuthing and the fun he has doing it. Rushmore McKenzie is a former St. Paul cop, independently wealthy from a reward for finding an embezzler. He has lots of contacts, including those who frequent his girlfriend's high-end bar. And he has a voice that is very much like that of Boston private eye Spenser; readers will have a good time just listening to McKenzie sizing up people and situations. In this eleventh installment in the series, a young woman seeks McKenzie out at the girlfriend's bar, asking him to find her boyfriend. The girl is the granddaughter of a Minnesota billionaire, a man who uses his money to buy and bludgeon people, including his granddaughter, to his will. The boyfriend, Juan Carlos Navarre, was seen most recently in two places that he claimed to own, a mansion and a restaurant. Other people want to know where Navarre is, too, and they commit arson and murder to find out. Housewright not only delivers steadily growing suspense, but also provides a canny tour of the high and low life in and around the Twin Cities, including an unforgettable tour of the posh Lake Minnetonka. Housewright may be the best Minnesota Noir writer going.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)