Jelly's Gold

Rushmore McKenzie was a St. Paul policeman until an unexpected event allowed him to retire as a millionaire. Now he does favors for friends as an unlicensed private investigator. When graduate students Ivy Flynn (who first appeared in Tin City) and Josh Berglund come to him and ask for help finding gold never recovered from a 1930's bank robbery in North Dakota, McKenzie is intrigued.

What follows is a wonderful combination of a classic caper story and an interesting look into the seedy underbelly of St. Paul, MN in the 1930's, when corruption was rampant and gangsters were left alone by the police as long as they did their crimes elsewhere. I love spending time with McKenzie and his friends. The characters are very well developed show more (including the city of St. Paul) , the stories move quickly, and the writing is snappy. McKenzie is full of snark and sarcasm, which I really enjoy.

I highly recommend this series for anyone who likes hard-boiled P.I. novels that don't take themselves too seriously. They remind me of the Nebraska mystery series by William J. Reynolds, which came out in the late 1980s (and are definitely worth checking out from your local library if you can find them). They also remind me a little of Dennis Lehane's Kenzie and Gennero mysteries, although those tend to be darker. show less

When Rushmore McKenzie's friend, Ivy, and her boyfriend, Josh, ask McKenzie to help them hunt for 1930s gangster Frank "Jelly" Nash's cache of gold bars, it sounds like fun. The task is more intellectual than physical, and it promises a potentially big pay-off. It soon becomes apparent that other people are after the gold, and things turn violent. At first the St. Paul police have little interest in helping their former colleague investigate a cold case, but their attitude changes when the pursuit of the forgotten gold leads to murder.

The success of a treasure hunt mystery depends on the plausibility of the circumstances through which the treasure was forgotten, uncertainty about the characters involved in the treasure hunt, and the show more location of the story. Many of the Prohibition/Depression era gangsters met violent ends, so it's not beyond imagination that one of them would take the secret of his hidden gold to his grave. McKenzie's use of libraries, archives, and public records to research events from the 1930s is realistic. None of the other players in the treasure hunt are above suspicion. The action travels all over the Twin Cities, so readers who live in or who have visited the area can have fun recognizing familiar places.

The plot reminds me of something you'd see on Magnum, PI, Remington Steele, or Moonlighting. Readers who enjoyed those TV series will probably like this book. show less

When a friend approaches Rushmore McKenzie about helping find some gold that has stolen during the gangster era, he is skeptical of its existence. Then as he begins to do a bit more research and discovers he is being tailed, he finds that others are looking for this same gold. One of the gold seekers ends up dead. Did someone want the gold so badly that they were willing to kill for it? McKenzie must keep digging until he discovers the murderer. It amazes me that all of the gold seekers seemed to think that they would come into possession of the gold. Otherwise this was an enjoyable read with a lot of historical detail on the gangster era. It created a sense of place for the St. Paul of the 1930s as well as the one of today.