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The seventh book in the Rushmore McKenzie series finds the ex-cop knight-errant kidnapped in the dead of night, Tased, cuffed, thrown in a car trunk, and driven to a small town in South Dakota, where he finds that a doppelganger has used his identity to con town officials and local businesses out of nearly everything they have. Though McKenzie didn't exactly ride in on a white horse, his habit of helping people out of scrapes leads him to remain in town long enough to find out what he can about the impostor so he can save the community. He's out of his usual element – his beloved hometown of St. Paul – but city officials are reluctant to call in state or federal investigators. The community is barely clinging to life, and if it became public just how much money the swindler took from them on the pretext of developing an outlet mall, Libbie would never recover. Besides, McKenzie is the only one who knows what parts of the con man's identity are false, and those mistakes might be enough to bring the scoundrel to justice. Though McKenzie isn't a private investigator – he's independently wealthy and needs to take on only cases that interest him – his character is drawn from the classic PI tradition, being a tough guy with a smart mouth, an independent streak, and a soft spot for underdogs. But instead of drawing on the familiar map of St. Paul, Housewright throws his hero into a small town dominated by an obnoxious businessman who thinks the town should be named after him, where a sultry innkeeper who sets her cap at the stranger, and a loutish bully, who is used to getting his way, with arson if need be. In short, McKenzie is a PI character cast in a Western, a stranger sent to restore law and order before riding off into the sunset. There's nothing terribly original about this mystery but Housewright builds a sturdy enough story out of the familiar tropes of the PI and Western genres to entertaining effect. McKenzie is like a solid, undemanding friend, guaranteed to be good company for a few hours without asking for much in return. § Barbara Fister is an academic librarian, columnist, and author of the Anni Koskinen mystery series.
Reviewed by Barbara Fister, June 2010
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