The Taking of Libbie, SD (McKenzie Series #7)

by David Housewright

Overview

In David Housewright's The Taking of Libbie, SD, a grifter cons an entire town using Mac McKenzie's name, leaving the real McKenzie facing an angry town with nothing left to lose.

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781429928571
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/08/2010
Series:	Rushmore McKenzie Series , #7
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

DAVID HOUSEWRIGHT has been a journalist, an advertising copywriter, a creative director, and a writing instructor. He won both the Edgar award and the Minnesota Book award for his crime fiction. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

DAVID HOUSEWRIGHT has won the Edgar Award and is the three-time winner of the Minnesota Book Award for his crime fiction, which includes the modern noir Twin Cities P.I. Mac McKenzie series (starting with A Hard Ticket Home). He is a past president of the Private Eye Writers of America (PWA). He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Editorial Reviews

In his seventh outing (Jelly's Gold, 2009, etc.) Rushmore McKenzie is mistaken for . . . well . . . Rushmore McKenzie and kidnapped. In the dead of night, two intruders break into his Minnesota home, overpower him, Taser him, shove him into the trunk of their car-and the next thing millionaire ex-cop McKenzie knows, he's in Libbie, S.D., pop. 1,200, where there's every possibility he could be lynched. It doesn't take long to sort out the scenario that's brought him to so pretty a pass. Handcuffed, still in his nightclothes, he sits in Police Chief Gustafson's hardscrabble jail because, it seems, there's one Rushmore McKenzie too many. The ersatz McKenzie has perpetrated an elaborate scam involving the construction of an ambitious but imaginary mall. As a consequence, much of Libbie has been fleeced, and much of Libbie is angry enough for the sort of mass hysteria and rampant self-delusion that would account for McKenzie's far-from-funny comedy of errors. Equally inclined to vengeance, McKenzie sets out to find the double-dealing rogue who has so iniquitously doubled for him. But the smooth-talking imposter has vanished, leaving behind a stack of depleted wallets, an array of broken female hearts and a series of homicides, in which, one way or another, he qualifies as a person of interest. Heavy-handed plotting and nothing-special characters undercut what begins so well.

Kirkus Reviews