Hidden Graves

December 5, 2016
Del Elstrom uncovers ancient crimes and sordid secrets in Fredrickson’s well-paced sixth mystery to feature the witty, junk food–dependent PI (after 2015’s The Confessors’ Club). In need of a job to help pay for the renovation of his eccentric home in Rivertown, Ill. (“the greasiest of the Cook County suburbs”), Elstrom accepts a case from a mysterious client. All he has to do is check on the whereabouts of three men, whose last known addresses were in Arizona, California, and Oregon. He pockets his cashier’s check for $2,000 and sets off on his quest. But his trip out west brings up more questions than it answers. He returns to Rivertown to find that someone is setting him up to take the rap for murder. It takes all his skill and luck, plus the help of a beautiful journalist, a rich and politically connected ex-wife, a loyal friend, and a posse of game old dames for Elstrom to make it through the thicket of deceit in this satisfying hard-boiled crime novel. Agent: John Silbersack, Trident Media Group.

May 4, 2015
In Fredrickson’s complex fifth Dek Elstrom mystery (after 2013’s The Dead Caller from Chicago), somebody is murdering Chicago’s wealthiest movers and shakers in a manner that makes each death look like the result of either natural causes, suicide, or an accident. The police refuse to believe that this isn’t mere coincidence. When Wendell Phelps, the “head of Chicago’s largest electric company,” decides that he’s next on the list, he hires Elstrom to investigate. Elstrom fits the classic PI mold: a recently divorced recovering alcoholic with a weight problem, a shabby wardrobe, and a grubby residence. And it’s clear that the author is heavily under the influence of Raymond Chandler: “She took a slow look at the silver tape curling off the Jeep’s top and side curtains like a spinster’s hairdo gone wild in an electric storm, flicked the cigarette butt into the street and said she’d drive.” Fans of 1940s-era hard-boiled detective fiction will find a lot to like. Agent: John Silbersack, Trident Media Group.

June 1, 2015
A setup to quicken the heart of traditional mystery fans: three elderly Chicago gazillionaires die under circumstances that hardly seem suspicious. One is felled by a heart attack, another by cancer, and a third killed in a hit-and-run. But their colleague, crusty old Wendell Phelps, is convinced these CEOs were murdered, and he's afraid he's next. Phelps' ex-son-in-law, the feckless insurance investigator Dek Elstrom, is press-ganged into poking into what Elstrom is sure is a noncase. To kill time, he gathers the dead men's appointment calendars. Damnedest thing! They all died on nights they attended mysterious C meetings. Elstrom's attempts to make the connections bring him in contact with some delightfully offbeat people. The best of them is the shadowy cop Delray Delmar, who sounds like a holdover from one of E. W. Hornung's early-twentieth century cracksman novels. The author tries for an actioner ending that isn't as intriguing as the C puzzlement, and we read patiently through gun battles and car chases to the good stuff: revelations about what these old pirates were up to and why they died. Straight-ahead mystery for straight-ahead mystery readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2017
Chicago private investigator Dek Elstrom is having a hard time making ends meet, what with the recent collapse of his marriage, the scandal that wrecked his career, and the lack of an actual private investigator's license. When a woman hires Dek to confirm the whereabouts of three men, Dek's not exactly in a position to turn down the work, despite his client's deeply suspicious behavior (Why, for example, does she show up for their meeting wearing an obvious disguise?). When Dek discovers that one of the men is dead and the other two seem to have gone missing, not to mention the fact that the dead man may have taken on a new identity a couple of decades ago, he realizes he's stumbled onto the kind of case that could resurrect his careerif he can beat a (trumped-up) murder charge, that is. The writing here is splendid, echoing genre veteran Loren D. Estleman, and Dek Elstrom is the kind of guy we genuinely like spending time with. This is the sixth in the Elstrom series, and let's hope there will be many more to come.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)