Literary pick of the week: Mac McKenzie’s back in ‘Something Wicked’

Mary Ann Grossmann, Pioneer Press
·3 min read

Nina crawled up behind me and kissed the scar on my shoulder where the shrapnel had sliced into me when a bomb blew up a friend’s truck. She kissed the collarbone that had been fractured when I leapt out of a two-story building to avoid getting blown up by another bomb and nuzzled the top of my head where they had drilled two dime-size burr holes to relieve the epidermal hematoma that had occurred when I was nearly clubbed to death. At the same time her fingers danced over the hole in my back where I had been shot.

The paragraph above tells readers what they need to know about Rushmore “Mac” McKenzie’s previous 18 adventures. He’s been in a lot of trouble. Now, thanks to author David Housewright, graduate of Cretin High School and the University of St. Thomas, McKenzie is back in “Something Wicked.”

McKenzie was a detective with the St. Paul Police Department and by solving a crime he became a millionaire. Although he retired from the force, he’s rich enough to do an occasional informal “favor” for a friend.

In McKenzie’s 19th case his wife, Nina Truhler, owner of a jazz club on St. Paul’s Cathedral Hill, insisted he retire after he came out of a coma in “What Doesn’t Kill Us” (winner of a prestigious Edgar Award).

In “Something Wicked,” Nina has to ask McKenzie to come out of retirement once more, when her former employee Jenness Crawford asks for help. Her family owns a century-old castle on a lake close to Redding, Minn., near the South Dakota border. Her grandmother Tess Redding died in a locked bedroom and Jenness thinks one of her three aunts or two uncles killed their mother so they could sell Redding Castle to a developer and walk away with more than $1 million each. The police don’t agree, saying the old woman’s death was from natural causes.

This family is a bunch of quibblers. Big Ben, Jenness’ uncle, is having affairs, and so is his wife, domineering Olivia. Her Aunt Carly just wants the money and doesn’t talk about it in a ladylike way. Aunt Eden cares about peace and justice and Anna is a professor at Southwest State University. They all have secrets.

Housewright touches on contemporary America through McKenzie’s observations:

…the entire world seemed bright and carefree — unless you looked closely. Then you could see the masks some citizens wore against the pandemic and the kid on the corner handing out flyers promoting racism and the dueling campaign signs espousing conflicting political views that allowed for no compromise and you’d realize how deceptive appearances could be.

That kid on the corner belongs to a small white supremacist group, Sons of Europa, that worship the Nordic gods and has a headquarters on the lake where guards stand with automatic rifles. What are they up to? Were they responsible for the burning cross on the Castle grounds?

The fun in this book comes when the town’s chief of police, Deidre Gardner, walks onto the page. A tall, fit African American, she was McKenzie’s colleague in the Twin Cities. Their banter is funny, especially when Dee keeps calling Mac “Jessica” after Angela Lansbury’s portrayal of amateur small-town sleuth Jessica Fletcher.

Chief Gardner hires McKenzie as an informal consultant as they question suspects and follow leads. The story kicks up a notch when one of the siblings is killed and two priceless paintings are stolen from the castle.

This is the first book in this series that gives us good insight into Nina, who is much more in evidence on these pages than in previous books. She’s smart, sassy, beautiful, in love with her husband and a good business mentor for Jenness, who wants to figure out how the castle can make money so her aunts and uncles won’t sell the place she loves.

As always, McKenzie’s inner thoughts are set in italics, giving us an insight into what he’s thinking and feeling.

A mystery that includes two dead people can’t exactly be called a fun read. But there is something easy and quippy about “Something Wicked” that makes this perfect dock/patio/porch summer read.

Housewright will introduce his novel (Minotaur Books, $26.99) at 6 p.m. Thursday, May 26, at Next Chapter Booksellers, 38 S. Snelling Ave., St. Paul. Go to nexchapterbooksellers.com for ticket information. He will also be at Once Upon a Crime, 604 W. 26th St., at noon Saturday, June 4.

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