She Treads Softly: Them Bones

Sunday, June 22, 2025

Them Bones

Them Bones by David Housewright
6/24/25; 320 pages
St. Martin's Press
Rushmore McKenzie #22

Them Bones by David Housewright is a highly recommended investigative mystery and the 22nd novel featuring unofficial P.I. Rushmore McKenzie. This outing is a search for a stolen dinosaur skull.

Angela Bjork saved McKenzie's life seven years ago and now she needs his help. Angela, who is now a doctoral candidate at the University of Minnesota, was working at a dig site near Powderville, Montana when she found skeleton of an Ankylosaurus. At the end of the season the skull was stabilized and loaded on a truck to move to the university, but that night the camp was attacked and the skull, valued at $6 million, was stolen. When it appears the police investigation is going nowhere, Angela turns to McKenzie for help in finding the skull.

The first quarter of the book involves Angela relating the actions, people, and dynamics at the dig site. It is engaging if you are interested in the finer details at a dig site and does serve to introduce all the characters. Once McKenzie is contacted the investigation takes off. He has plenty of contacts through official and unofficial sources to assist with his inquiries. His initial suspect list consisting of 10 professors, graduate students, and undergraduate interns involved with the dig.

Them Bones can be enjoyed as a standalone novel. You won't have the background information and insight into previous cases and interpersonal relationships, but you will be able to follow the current investigation. The even paced novel provides plenty of clues to follow along the way and the plot takes an interesting turn in the effort to recover the skull. There is some humor along the way and the interaction between all the characters is interesting.

Them Bones would be a good choice for those who enjoy low-tension mysteries and for everyone following the McKenzie series. Thanks to St. Martin's Press for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

No comments:

Post a Comment

John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.