A Hard Ticket Home (McKenzie Series #1)

by David Housewright Narrated by Brent Hinkley

Overview

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 stars.

Editorial Reviews

bn.com

The Barnes & Noble Review
Former St. Paul policeman Rushmore McKenzie's life philosophy is pretty straightforward: "Live well. Be helpful." So when an old friend asks Mac for a favor involving his dying nine-year old daughter, he instantly agrees -- and soon finds himself in the crosshairs of a gun-running gang, a sadistic murderer, and the FBI.

Stacy Carlson is a little girl with a smile "bright enough to melt snow" who is suffering from leukemia. Her only hope for survival is getting a bone marrow transplant; but the only possible match left is her older sister, Jamie, who ran away after graduating high school and hasn't been heard from since. Stacy's father pleads with Mac to use his detective skills to somehow locate Jamie and bring her home to Grand Rapids before it's too late. Mac accepts and begins his investigation in the Twin Cities, where Jamie's former high school friend Merci Cole is living as a prostitute and petty criminal. The trail, however, quickly leads to a group of powerful entrepreneurs. When machine gun-toting members of an infamous gang try to murder Mac, he realizes he is close to uncovering a mind-boggling conspiracy…

In spite of the somewhat two-dimensional character of Rushmore McKenzie, A Hard Ticket Home boasts nonstop action, masterfully knotty plotlines, and bevy of intriguing peripheral characters (the reluctant prostitute Merci, the oversexed socialite Lila, Mac's law enforcement buddy Bobby Dunston, the wheelchair-bound informant Chopper, et al.). Reminiscent of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels -- especially the priceless hard-boiled one-liners -- Housewright's latest will appeal to mystery fans who enjoy their whodunits down and dirty. Paul Goat Allen

Publishers Weekly

Housewright's first mystery series (for which he won an Edgar) about Holland Taylor, a former St. Paul cop who became a smart-talking private eye, trickled out after three books. His new series is about Rushmore McKenzie, a former St. Paul cop who becomes a smart-talking (albeit unlicensed) private eye. What makes them different? Not all that much. The earlier series was perhaps a bit harder-edged: Taylor left the force after he was accused of murdering the drunk driver who killed his wife and child, while McKenzie's motives for going private involve a sudden cash windfall when he captures a wanted swindler. And many chuckles are generated by McKenzie's first name (he was conceived on a trip to Mt. Rushmore), which is why he prefers to be called Mac. But basically McKenzie is the same kind of genial doofus his predecessor was, a true son of Spenser who tells us in great detail about every Pig's Eye beer he drinks and every opera record he plays. The author has a sharp, bouncy prose style, and his story about Mac's search for a friend's long-missing daughter who can possibly be a bone marrow donor for her younger sister has some touching and exciting moments. But Housewright has been shopping for interesting character traits at the same store for too long, and there's nothing here to show that a series about McKenzie will be any different or any more successful than the one about Taylor. Agent, Alison Picard. (May 12) Forecast: Blurbs from Nevada Barr, S.J. Rozan and Pete Hautman should help Housewright's new series get off to a strong start. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Millionaire ex-cop rights wrongs pro bono in an amiable throwback to Marlowe/Archer. So what if the fat wad in McKenzie's exchequer is somewhat tainted? It's his pure heart that matters. Consider the case of the Carlsons, who came to him because of their daughter Jamie, who went missing seven years ago, just after graduating from high school. Now their younger daughter Stacy, diagnosed with leukemia, is down to her last hope-a bone-marrow transplant from a compatible donor who just might be Jamie. The Carlsons know McKenzie often succeeds when St. Paul police can't, so will he please search for Jamie? The knight-errant buckles down but soon runs into big-time obstacles. It's not that Jamie is difficult to track. It's that through the years a good many other nefarious types have also tracked her just as easily and are increasingly nervous about McKenzie's efforts. Suddenly finding himself item one on a variety of dubious agendas, he acquires the obligatory bumps and bruises. McKenzie will crack his case and the Carlsons find their donor, though neither in quite the way the clues seem to be pointing. Housewright (Dearly Departed, 1999, etc.) has a keeper in McKenzie-tough, smart, and sufficiently flawed to be entirely likable.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177659725
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	06/09/2020
Series:	Rushmore McKenzie Series , #1
Edition description:	Unabridged

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