Riley Brodin is the granddaughter of Walter Muehlenhaus - a man as rich, powerful, and connected as anyone since the days of J. P. Morgan. Despite her family's connections, it's McKenzie she reaches out to when her relatively new boyfriend goes missing. Despite his reservations about getting involved with the Muehlenhaus family - again - McKenzie agrees to look for one Juan Carlos Navarre. What he finds, though, is a man who appears to be a ghost. The house - mansion, really - he told Riley he owned is actually a rental, barely lived in and practically devoid of personal effects. The restaurant he claimed to own is owned by another and Navarre merely an investor. He apparently has no friends, no traceable past, and McKenzie isn't the only one looking for him. Whoever Juan Carlos Navarre is and wherever he's gone, the one thing that is clear is that he's trouble, and is perhaps someone - as Riley's family makes clear-better out of the picture. Unfortunately for everyone, McKenzie likes trouble and trouble likes him.

ABOUT DAVID HOUSEWRIGHT

A reformed newspaper reporter and ad man, Housewright's book "Penance" (Foul Play Press) earned the 1996 Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America and was nominated for a Shamus in the same category by the Private Eye Writers of America.

"Practice to Deceive" won the 1998 Minnesota Book Award (it is currently being developed as a feature film) and "Jelly's Gold" won the same prize in 2010. His 11th novel -- "Highway 61" -- was published in June 2011.

Housewright's short stories have appeared in several anthologies including "Silence of the Loons," "Twin Cities Noir," "Resort to Murder," and "Once Upon A Crime" and publications as diverse as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and True Romance.

He has a line of books featuring Rushmore McKenzie -- a former cop turned millionaire.

He has another line of books featuring Holland Taylor -- a former cop turned private detective.

A stolen gem with a tragic history, a curse and a million dollar ransom is Mac McKenzie's latest case, in David Housewright's Curse of the Jade Lily

Several years ago, Rushmore McKenzie became an unexpected millionaire and set about doing not much of anything. Now, showing up at his doorstep is the insurance company that paid the settlement that made him rich—and they want a favor. Someone has stolen a very expensive gem from a local art museum and is willing to ransom it back. The only condition is that McKenzie has to be the go between. And this is no ordinary gem—it is a jade with a history going back to the Qing Dynasty and a reputed curse that stories claim has ruined or killed everyone who has ever owned it. McKenzie agrees to help but what starts out as a simple ransom quickly becomes complicated.

Suddenly other parties—including the State Department and a mysterious woman named Heavenly—start showing up, wanting McKenzie to turn over the gem to them. When the murdered body of on of the thieves turns up in a snow drift, it looks like the cursed Jade Lily has claimed its latest victim. And there may well be more to follow…

A grifter cons an entire town using McKenzie’s name, leaving the real McKenzie facing an angry town with nothing left to lose

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Rushmore McKenzie is a retired cop, an unexpected millionaire, and an occasional unlicensed private investigator. So, it isn’t the biggest surprise in the world when he’s attacked and kidnapped from his home—McKenzie has more than a few enemies out there with a grudge against him. But it is a surprise when it turns out his kidnapping is a case of mistaken identity.

McKenzie was taken to the small plains town of Libbie, South Dakota which just lost pretty much everything it had to a con man using McKenzie’s name. Using a scam involving a new shopping mall, the grifter apparently stole all the money electronically from the bank then disappeared, leaving behind a devastated town full of people with many reasons to hate him. To that list of enemies, he’s just added McKenzie who is now determined to help the devastated townspeople, as well as catch and punish the weasel besmirching his reputation.

Rushmore McKenzie, a retired St. Paul policeman and unexpected millionaire, often works as an unlicensed P.I., doing favors as it suits him. When graduate students Ivy Flynn and Josh Berglund show up with a story about $8 million in missing stolen gold from the ‘30s, McKenzie is intrigued.

In the early 20th century, St. Paul, Minnesota was an open city —a place where gangsters could come and stay unmolested by the local authorities. Frank “Jelly” Nash was suspected of masterminding a daring robbery of gold bars in 1933, but, before he could unload it, he was killed in the Kansas City Massacre. His gold, they believe, is still somewhere in St. Paul.

But they aren’t the only ones looking. So are a couple of two-bit thugs, a woman named Heavenly, a local big-wig, and others. When Berglund is shot dead outside of Ivy’s apartment, the treasure hunt turns unexpectedly deadly. McKenzie is looking for more than a legendary stash from seventy-five years ago, he’s looking for a killer and the long hidden truth behind Jelly’s gold.

Homicide cop Bobby Dunston's daughter has been kidnapped, taken in broad daylight on a city street in the middle of September. The kidnappers demand a million dollars and force Dunston to get the ransom from his friend McKenzie. It soon becomes apparent to the two of them that one of the kidnappers is childhood pal Scottie, a once aspiring drummer now gone astray, and that the kidnapping is payback for "crimes" committed in their past.

McKenzie, former cop and now unlicensed P.I., handles the ransom drop-off and the child is returned safely. But Scottie is found dead - brutally murdered - and someone has taken out an open contract on McKenzie, using his own money to pay for it. Dodging attempts on his life from assassins of all shapes and sizes, McKenzie now has precious little time to uncover the mastermind behind it all if he's going to survive.

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.

Rushmore "Mac" McKenzie has a lot of old girlfriends, but only one went on to marry the current governor of the state of Minnesota. And only one is calling him with a desperate request to meet in secret. First Lady Lindsay Barrett is carrying an anonymous e-mail that contains the makings of an ugly rumor about her husband, the man about to run for higher office---perhaps even the highest office. Someone says they have evidence that Jack Barrett killed his high school sweetheart. Lindsay says it's an outright lie, but the truth lies buried decades in the past in the small town where the governor grew up.

Of course, Mac, who's richer than he needs to be and always has plenty of time on his hands, is in the business of handling such matters for his friends. So he packs up and drives straight into the governor's past with the brilliantly conceived plan to poke around and see if he can stir up a little information. He's soon got goons of all sorts poking him back, including a nasty little group of political movers and shakers who aren't above kidnapping and murder to protect their interests. It's clear that his little plan has stirred up nothing but trouble.

With no choice but to stick to it, he continues shifting through a complex web of interlocking secrets and lies, some decades old and some rooted violently in the present day. It's up to Mac to sort truth from untruth before a vicious rumor becomes a political nightmare---or worse, before the "outright lie" is proved a solid, irrefutable fact.

Mac McKenzie is rich. So rich that he's left his job as a Twin Cities police officer and spends his time doing favors large and small for friends. So when an old Marine buddy of his father's calls with a request Mac takes the time to help him out. And it is one of the stranger favors he's ever been asked: the elderly Mr. Mosley, a beekeeper, wants Mac to find out why his bees are suddenly dying in droves.

Mac does some digging and before long turns up a hornet's nest of trouble in the person of Frank Crosetti, a new neighbor on the property abutting Mosley's bees. What started out as an innocent investigation into some unregulated pesticide quickly turns lethal. Crosetti sticks around long enough to make some very specific threats, then disappears into the wind leaving behind a vicious rape, a lifeless body, and a very angry McKenzie bursting for someone to blame.

With only the faintest of trails to follow and a suspicious group of federal agents gunning for him, Mac dives underground, taking only a stash of cash and a small arsenal with him on his undercover mission. Before long Mac's deep in the forgotten corners of Minneapolis sniffing for any sign of Crosetti, unable to rest until he gets results. Combining engaging humor and wit with action-packed storytelling, Edgar Winner David Housewright's second Mac McKenzie novel is clever, compelling, and thoroughly enjoyable.

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.