From the Grave

Rushmore “Mac” McKenzie’s past comes back to haunt him, perhaps literally, in Edgar winner Housewright’s fun, fast-moving 17th outing for the onetime St. Paul, Minn., cop turned unlicensed detective (after 2019’s Dead Man’s Mistress). During a lecture, a psychic medium channels a dark presence who talks about a large sum of money and repeats the name McKenzie. The presence calls for McKenzie’s death before it will reveal the location of the money. A friend in the audience later relays all this to Mac, who thinks the presence, if it exists, is Leland Hayes, a criminal Mac shot dead 25 years earlier in the aftermath of a bank robbery, from which the money was never recovered. Mac is soon caught up in the world of psychics, not so reality TV, and very real physical threats by those seeking the lost treasure. The appealing Mac and his cohorts engage in amusing banter as they attempt to locate the pilfered cash before someone sends Mac off to the great beyond. Housewright leaves it tantalizingly ambiguous whether Leland’s spirit is real. Readers will be entertained either way. Agent: Alison Picard, Alison J. Picard Agency. (July)