Highway 61

March 14, 2011
Rushmore McKenzie agrees to help Jason Truhler, the ex-husband of his lover, Nina Truhler, in Housewright's solid eighth novel featuring the Twin Cities ex-cop who occasionally does "favors" for friends (after 2010's The Taking of Libbie, SD). Jason appears to be the victim of a variation on the badger game when he attended the Thunder Bay Blues Festival in Ontario. He woke the next morning in a cheap hotel room, naked, with a dead girl on the floor, lots of blood, and no memoryânow he's being blackmailed for murder. Trying to unravel the scam leads McKenzie into a morass involving an Internet sex ring, drug dealers, a pair of thugs called Big Joe and Little Joe Stippel, arsonists called Backdraft and Bug, and some of the Twin Cities' most powerful people. The tenacious McKenzie bounces between cops, bad guys, and movers and shakers with a tenuous hold on legalities but a good grasp on ethics.

June 1, 2011

Rushmore McKenzie, the ex-cop turned millionaire (The Taking of Libbie, SD, 2010, etc.), likes doing favors for his friends, but with friends like Jason Truhler...

Having cracked a dream case and banked several million in reward money, McKenzie has now officially retired from the St. Paul, Minn., police. But for a hard-nosed, adrenaline-addicted, homicide cop like McKenzie, retirement is relative. Put it this way: McKenzie has certain well-honed skills; he has friends with certain dark-tinged problems; mesh the two and suddenly McKenzie is a very busy benefactor indeed. When Jason comes knocking at his door, however, McKenzie finds he must expand his view of friendship to include the occasional lowlife, someone undeniably untrustworthy. Erica, the entirely trustworthy 18-year-old daughter of both Jason and the woman McKenzie loves, has pleaded with McKenzie to help her dad, though she knows full well how undeserving he is. Jason, it seems, is being blackmailed, the victim in a con game as old as chicanery itself. Or maybe not, since Jason's relationship with the truth is tenuous. One thing is certain: With friends like Jason, McKenzie can never be sure where his next enemy is coming from.

Edgar-winning Housewright won't make converts with this installment, but McKenzie remains likable enough to entertain the fan base.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

May 1, 2011

A Twin Cities detective (The Taking of Libbie, SD) finds the stakes are high when he helps a guy trapped in a scam.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2011
One-time St. Paul, Minnesota, cop, now idle rich unlicensed private investigator, McKenzie prefers to help only friends who are in trouble. But this time he agrees to come to the aid of his girlfriends mendacious, womanizing ex-husband, Jason Truhler, who is being blackmailed with photos showing him unconscious in a room with a naked, dead teenager bathed in blood. McKenzies investigation leads him to an online prostitution ring, two murderous psychos, two considerably more decorous hitters, conflicts with his police buddies, and a scandal that could rock the whole state. The plot is workmanlike until Housewright introduces a wealthy, powerful, under-the-radar, Borgiaesque fixer who wants to put a lid on the scandal and is more dangerous than all the killers already pursuing McKenzie. In a state long admired for good governance, only St. Pauls somewhat rascally backroom politics make this plot remotely plausible as it adds a touch of otherness to the heartland. Housewright amps up the action for a furious, action-filled finish.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)