Review: "Them Bones" by David Housewright

 

Them Bones by David Housewright Minotaur Books, 2025   David Housewright’s Them Bones—which is the twenty-second Rushmore McKenzie mystery—is a tale of… well, two tales of the same story. Okay, not really two tales, but rather a single story told in two different styles. The McKenzie books are written in first person from the perspective of McKenzie—an unlicensed private eye in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, that spends his time doing favors for friends. But Them Bones is distinct from its predecessors because the crime is detailed in third person from the perspective of the client, Angela Bjork. We last saw Angela as a girl saving McKenzie’s life in The Taking of Libbie, SD (2010), but now she is all grown up and working on her Ph.D. in paleontology at the University of Minnesota. Angela discovered a nearly intact fossil of an Ankylosaurus while working a dinosaur dig in Montana. It was a profound find because it is the most complete of its kind, but before the bones can be transported to the Twin Cities, the skull was stolen. Angela tells McKenzie, and the reader, about the discovery (in May) and the heist (in August) and everything that happened in-between. In this unofficial prologue, Angela introduces the suspects—professors, students, and other miscellany—that were present at the dig site when the heist occurred. The paleontology stuff was interesting, including how the dig was done, the problems they encountered and personalities involved; however, it took so long, about a quarter of the narrative, that I had begun thinking McKenzie had the week off. But once McKenzie agrees to help Angela recover the Ankylosaurus, and he takes charge of the narrative things really pick up. In fact, Them Bones, suddenly becomes a McKenzie novel. With his subtle and not-so-subtle wit, his penchant for finding trouble and breaking the rules, and his always gallant search for justice, McKenzie does an admirable job of flushing out the villains. The action moves from college campuses (there are two), to a museum, to high class neighborhoods, and from Minnesota to Montana to Canada and back again. And it is a good bit of fun. But that opening prologue made the entire enterprise a little wobbly. Its length almost made me give up before the good stuff started, which I’ve never encountered with David Housewright’s writing. It felt like Housewright was setting-up a traditional whodunit, which is cool, but (for me at least) it never quite worked that way. What I did like about Them Bones is far more than what I disliked. As usual, the setting—the Twin Cities, Montana, and even rural Canada—was vivid and melded perfectly with the story. The actual mystery, who was the Inside Man that helped the thieves steal the skull, is compelling and McKenzie’s self-deprecating style and often flippant attitude is fun. There is a good deal of subterfuge and the final reveal is both surprising and perfectly right. But a few hours spent with McKenzie, even in a flawed tale like Them Bones, is always a chore to look forward to.

Find Them Bones on Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback.