Coming June 24, 2025!

There are two things that Rushmore McKenzie hates to turn down—a request from a friend and a challenge. Both of them show up in his wife's nightclub in the person of Angela Bjork, who has come to request McKenzie's help. McKenzie, once a homicide detective, now through a series of unlikely events, is a retired millionaire. But occasionally, for friends, he will do some unofficial private detective work. Over the years, he's hunted down a stolen Stradivarius, the hoard of a 1930's gangster, and recovered a stolen, apparently cursed, artifact but McKenzie never imagined a case like this. An exceedingly rare dinosaur skull has been stolen.

Angela, a doctoral candidate, was out on a dig site in Southeastern Montana, when she found a skeleton of an Ankylosaurus. And no sooner than when the skull was removed and placed on a truck then they were attacked, the truck and skull stolen. Worried that nothing is being done to find the stolen skull, she turns to McKenzie. Worth millions on the black market, the chance to recover it becomes fainter by the day. And the people behind the theft are likely willing to do anything, to anyone, to hold onto it.

REVIEWS

“The McKenzie series has been rolling along smoothly since 2004’s A Hard Ticket Home, and this, this 22nd installment, is just as well written, suspenseful, and satisfying as its predecessors. A sure-fire hit for Housewright’s fans."

—Booklist

"If anyone can pull it off and keep the reader’s attention, it’s Edgar winner (for Best First Novel) and past president of Private Eye Writers of America’s David Housewright.  Not only does he know how to craft a solid story, he knows his paleontology, as well.  He brings the dinosaur to life . . . well, at least figuratively...Housewright never writes the same book twice and this one is just as fresh as all of his earlier novels. So, who doesn’t love the combination of dinosaurs and a bit of entertaining skulduggery?  Or in this case, “skull-duggery.”

—Deadly Pleasures