IN A HARD WIND

Unofficial Minnesota investigator Rushmore McKenzie, who maintains that “I just do favors for my friends,” ends up doing a whale of a favor for the friend of a friend of a friend.

Sgt. Michael Swenson of the Ramsey County Police has every reason to think that Jeanette “J.C.” Carrell killed developer Charles Sainsbury. She’d threatened to kill him before witnesses after Charles’ son, William, who runs his company, purchased the Circle, the isolated parcel her home shared with a handful of others, in order to tear down the owners’ houses and replace them with some more profitable dwellings; he was found buried in a shallow grave on her land; and her neighbor Katherine Hixson reported seeing J.C. coming down the hill from the gravesite that night carrying a shovel. But Sara Vaneps, J.C.’s dearest friend—whose Alzheimer’s-stricken grandfather, Carson Vaneps, apparently sold Sainsbury the Circle without J.C.’s knowledge—is convinced that she’s no killer. So McKenzie gets to work and, after several unspectacular rounds of questioning, produces another witness whose statement gets assistant county attorney Ted Kaplan to drop the charges. That’s when things get really interesting. For no sooner has the county removed J.C.’s ankle bracelet than she takes a powder, obligingly leaving her phone and identification papers behind, three days before a bulldozer operator discovers two more bodies buried under her gazebo. Now that the authorities have every reason to recapture the woman they just freed, McKenzie goes looking for her too, armed only with the obviously false stories she’s told him about her background. The results, however messy and unsatisfactorily wound up, are as powerfully affecting as the structure is original.

Housewright’s finest hour, bar none.