Unidentified Woman #15

During one of the first heavy snows of the winter, on the interstate outside the Twin Cities, Rushmore McKenzie is trapped behind an erratically-driven truck. Then a figure appears on the truck bed and a body is rolled out onto the road, right in front of McKenzie’s car. McKenzie avoids hitting the body, a bound woman who is barely alive, but his sudden braking in the middle of the highway starts a chain of accidents, resulting in a thirty-seven car pile-up. By the time the police arrive, and the EMTs and ambulances have taken care of the immediate injuries, the truck is long gone.

The injured woman awakens with no memories-not of the accident, not of anything-and is now referred to by the police as Unidentified Woman #15. With few leads, the detective in charge, McKenzie’s former partner and old friend Bobby Dunston, turns to McKenzie for a favor. Not that a favor is required, because when you dump a person in front of McKenzie’s moving car, he tends to take that personally.

Praise for UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #15:

“Housewright, winner of the prestigious national Edgar Award and three Minnesota Book Awards, strikes a perfect balance between fast-paced excitement as McKenzie chases the bad guys and his commitment to bar-owner Nina as they try to work out the nuances of their relationship since moving in together. All previous McKenzie thrillers earned high praise from critics, including several starred reviews, but in Unidentified Woman #15 McKenzie comes alive as never before. It’s as though Housewright got a surge of energy that lets us into Mac’s mind so we know him even more intimately. And with a 12th book in a series, that’s a fine thing.” –St. Paul Pioneer Press

“Housewright’s prose style is reminiscent of Donald E. Westlake’s: smoothly flowing, graceful, but never calling attention to itself. Rushmore is an amiable series lead… A strong addition to an always-reliable series, and a crime novel that will appeal both to readers looking for complex characters and satisfying style and to those interested mainly in story.” –Booklist

“Take a well-written noir and mix it with humor and readers will anticipate this 12th series outing (after The Devil May Care), especially if they appreciate mysteries with a strong sense of place and an appealing sleuth who is still figuring out what to do with himself after leaving the police force. A solid choice for fans of Steve Hamilton, Dennis Lehane, or James Lee Burke.” –Library Journal

“Unidentified woman #15 has no memory when she regains consciousness, but she believes the world is exactly the kind of ‘place where sooner or later’ someone rolls ‘you off the back of a speeding pickup truck.’ And here’s why I love McKenzie so much. Although he sees the world in a cynical way, he still tilts at windmills and fires stones from his slingshot. Housewright’s novels render the Twin Cities in familiar detail while helping us see things differently.” –Minneapolis StarTribune