Dead Man's Mistress

December 1, 2018

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 18, 2019
At the start of Edgar winner Housewright’s enjoyable 16th novel featuring PI Rushmore “Mac” McKenzie (after 2018’s Like to Die), Louise Wykoff, an icon of the Minnesota art world, hires Mac to retrieve three stolen paintings depicting her by renowned regional artist Randolph McInnis. In her youth, Louise was McInnis’s assistant until she became his muse, and he painted more than a hundred likenesses of her. After McInnis’s death, his widow sold all the paintings except for three that Randolph had given Louise. Until stolen, no one else knew of their existence or laid eyes on them. When a suspect turns up dead, the uncertainty surrounding the cause sends Mac in search of the killer. Local law enforcement, a documentary film crew, and a wealthy third party claiming ownership each have competing interests in finding the paintings. Cursed with a Midwestern charm to match his nonstop patter, Mac is an appealing hero who comfortably operates within the hardboiled detective tradition. Agent: Alison Picard, Alison J. Picard Agency.

April 1, 2019
Unlicensed Twin Cities private eye Rushmore McKenzie gets an object lesson in why successful American regionalist painters should drive more carefully. It's been a generation since Randolph McInnis skidded from a patch of ice to the ditch where he died and nearly that long since collectors have learned that most of the 133 paintings and drawings in his Scenes from an Inland Sea series depicted his assistant and muse, painter Louise Wykoff, often in intimate poses. But Louise and Mary Ann McInnis haven't spoken since then. Now Louise confides in McKenzie that McInnis actually left behind 136 artworks, three of which she secretly kept at his invitation. These three undocumented paintings have been stolen, and Louise, who can't afford to notify the police or, still less, McInnis' widow, wants McKenzie (Like to Die, 2018, etc.) to retrieve them. Tracing a tea set and a pair of candlesticks also filched from Louise's house to David Montgomery, a handyman with an eye for the ladies, McKenzie thinks, "It couldn't possibly be this easy," and the discovery of Montgomery's dead body perhaps an hour later proves him right. Even after he releases McKenzie from a holding cell, Cook County Sheriff Bill Bowland stoutly maintains against the evidence that Montgomery shot himself, and Deputy Peter Wurzer broadly hints that he'd love to invite McKenzie back and work him over. So it looks as if McKenzie will have to track down the paintings and fend off the interference of wealthy collector Bruce Flonta and documentary filmmaker Jeffery Mehren alone--except of course for Louise's neighbor Peg Younghans, Mehren's daughter Jennica, and all the other unsuitable women who keep throwing themselves at him. Smooth, professional work whose mounting complications, from a shooting in Canada to a secret auction for the missing canvases, are kept under admirable control right up to the double-barreled denouement.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 1, 2019
The dead man of the title is the legendary Minnesota artist Randolph McInnis, whose death years ago left the beautiful Louise Wykoff, his mistress, claiming to own three unrecorded McInnis masterpieces. But they've been stolen. She turns for help to Housewright's series hero, Rushmore McKenzie, an ex-cop, "semiprofessional busybody," and narrator of this fine trip of a novel. He's given to vivid expressions: the first man he visits is "lying on the floor with half a head." Rush must wrangle a monster cast of characters, including an art dealer, a documentary filmmaker and his dishy daughter, plus a cop with his tongue firmly in his cheek. And, blessedly, the artist's widow, who advises that alcohol in the a.m. is okay as long as you mix it with juice, and who also knows damn well what the Wykoff girl did to lay claim to those paintings. One beautifully staged, unusually clear set piece follows another as the plot unwinds, offering a free-of-charge education in the treachery-ridden art market. A smart, beautifully crafted entertainment.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)