Twin Cities P.I. Mac McKenzie Novels Series

Ex-St. Paul cop Rushmore McKenzie has more time, and more money, than he knows what to do with. In fact, when he's willing to admit it to himself (and he usually isn't), Mac is downright bored. Until he decides to do a favor for a friend facing a family tragedy: Nine-year-old Stacy Carlson has been diagnosed with leukemia, and the only one with the matching bone marrow that can save her is her older sister, Jamie. Trouble is, Jamie ran away from home years ago. Mac begins combing the backstreets of the Twin Cities, tracking down Jamie's last known associates. He starts with the expected pimps and drug dealers, but the path leads surprisingly to some of the Cities' most respected businessmen, as well as a few characters far more unsavory than the street hustlers he anticipated. As bullets fly and bodies drop, Mac persists, only to find that what he's looking for, and why, are not exactly what he'd imagined. David Housewright's uncanny ability to turn the Twin Cities into an exotic, brooding backdrop for noir fiction, and his winning, witty hero Rushmore McKenzie, serve as a wicked one-two punch in A Hard Ticket Home, a series debut that reinforces Housewright's well-earned reputation as one of crime fiction's rising stars.

Right up until they put him in jail, McKenzie thought the cops were kidding. After all, he did them a favor by stopping a rookie cop from roughing up a distraught woman at a murder scene. But the next thing Mac knows he's in jail, missing an important date with his girlfriend and reliving nightmares he thought he'd finally left behind – and he's vowing payback for all of it. If that means sticking his nose into a crime investigation, well, he's done it before. Only, what appears to be a straightforward case of a cheating boyfriend, his alcoholic girlfriend and an opportune baseball bat proves far more complicated than the police are willing to accept. More disconcerting, as he investigates, Mac finds himself again fighting the influence of a shadowy figure who controls more of what goes on in the Twin Cities than a rational voter would believe. And then there are the unidentified thugs who kill a witness and rough up him and his female lawyer-ally. Soon Mac realizes that the truth of this sordid crime may be as hard to find – and as hard to live with – as the justice he seeks.

In David Housewright's next novel featuring the beloved Rushmore McKenzie What Doesn't Kill Us—McKenzie has been shot and lies in a coma while the police and his friends desperately try to find out what he was doing and who tried to kill him. Rushmore McKenzie, former St. Paul police detective and unexpected millionaire, does the occasional, unofficial private detective work—mostly favors for friends. He's faced kidnappers, domestic terrorists, art thieves, among others, and had a hand in solving some of the most perplexing mysteries of the Twin Cities. But this time, his prodigious luck and intuition may have finally failed him: He was shot in the back by an unknown assailant and lies in a coma. His childhood friend, Lt. Bobby Dunston of the St. Paul Police Department, assigns his best detective to the case while other figures—on both sides of the law—pursue the truth. What was McKenzie investigating, what did he learn that so threatened someone that they tried to kill him? What do a sketchy bar in the wrong part of town, the area's prominent tech millionaire family, drug dealers, investment bankers, and a mysterious woman who left an unknown package for McKenzie all have in common? As time slowly begins to run out, the answer to those questions might be what stands between life and death.

An investigation of missing property takes a darker turn near Lake Superior in Dead Man’s Mistress, the next mystery in David Housewright’s award-winning McKenzie series. Louise Wykoff is arguably the most recognizable woman living in Minnesota, known for her presence in over one hundred paintings by the late and brilliant Randolph McInnis. Louise, known better as “That Wykoff Woman,” was just a young apprentice when her intimate representation and the fact of the McInnis’s marriage caused rumors to fly—and Louise to hide away for decades. All of McInnis's paintings are in museums or known private collections, until Louise confesses to having three more that no one has ever heard of—and now they've been stolen. Rushmore McKenzie, an occasional unlicensed private investigator, agrees to look into the theft. As he investigates, following clues that appear far too straightforward, he finds himself on the wrong side of the bars wondering if the trail might be deeper and darker than he’s been led to believe. Hours away from St. Paul, deep in the nature of Grand Marais, the truth seems murkier—and deadlier—than usual.

A past case comes back to haunt Twin Cities P.I. McKenzie as a stolen sum of money threatens to resurface in From the Grave, the next mystery in David Housewright’s award-winning series. Once a police detective in St. Paul, Minnesota, Rushmore McKenzie became an unlikely millionaire and an occasional unlicensed private investigator, doing favors for friends. But this time, he finds himself in dire need of working on his own behalf. His dear friend and first love Shelby Dunston attends a public reading by a psychic medium with the hope of connecting with her grandfather one final time. Instead, she hears McKenzie’s name spoken by the psychic in connection with a huge sum of stolen—and missing—money. Caught in a world of psychic mediums, with a man from his past with a stake in the future, and more than one party willing to go to great and deadly lengths to get involved, McKenzie must figure out just how much he’s willing to believe—like his life depends on it—before everything takes a much darker turn.

Once a homicide detective in St. Paul, Minnesota, Rushmore McKenzie is, through a series of unlikely events, both a millionaire and an occasional private investigator. As an unofficial PI, McKenzie only looks into the occasional situation for friends or friends of friends. Jeanette Carrell stretches McKenzie’s guidelines but she's in a bind. She's been arrested, indicted, and about to go on trial for murder. The body of the victim was found buried in a shallow grave at the far edge of her property. The victim was not only a neighbor, he was real estate developer accused of tricking a man with dementia, a friend of Carrell's, into signing away his property for development, property that he'd worked to keep pristine. When the developer was last seen, Carrell was heard threatening to kill him. Even more damning, a potential witness swears she saw Carrell digging near the grave site shortly after the victim disappeared. The final nail in the proverbial coffin is her alibi—she has none. With all the evidence—motive and means and opportunity—pointing to her guilt, and precious little in her defense, perhaps the most confusing aspect is Carrell’s calm attitude. Rushmore McKenzie is now faced with a challenging case—how to protect Carrell and unearth the truth of what really happened when all the circumstantial evidence is against her.