Tin City
A Mystery
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Edgar-winner Housewright's entertaining second noirish mystery starring Twin Cities ex-cop Rushmore "Mac" McKenzie (after 2004's A Hard Ticket Home), an elderly family friend, Mr. Mosley, asks Mac to look into the mysterious deaths of some bees at his honey farm. A University of Minnesota graduate student, Ivy Flynn, identifies an insecticide as the cause, but not before Mr. Mosley's surly new neighbor, Frank Crosetti, takes a shot at Ivy while she's collecting soil samples near his property. Then someone shoots Mr. Mosley in the head gangland style, and Crosetti disappears. A bereaved and guilt-ridden Mac pulls out all stops for a full-fledged investigation, diving under deep cover when the FBI issues a Seeking Information Alert for him. The suspense builds as Mac traces a couple of dim-bulb thugs to a tiny oasis of trailer homes where resides a bent FBI man, Steve Sykora, who's protecting a dangerous mobster. Channeling Raymond Chandler with tongue-in-cheek humor, Housewright delivers plenty of action, a pinch of romance and more than a few surprises.
