The Dead Caller from Chicago

Near the start of Fredrickson’s lively fourth mystery featuring Chicago insurance investigator Dek Elstrom (after 2012’s Hunting Sweetie Rose), Leo Brumsky, a close friend of Elstrom’s, receives a cryptic phone call from a man long presumed dead—a call that prompts the fearful Brumsky to flee Rivertown, a benighted hamlet just west of Chicago, long a hotbed of petty crime (prostitution, auto theft, gambling) due to rampant police corruption. But the locals find they are merely amateurs in criminality when a series of grisly murders alerts them that the Russian mafia may be moving in. But what does the mafia want in Rivertown? In order to get to the root of the escalating violence, Elstrom begins an investigation that immediately puts him at grave risk. A tart wit, hair-raising action, and exotic characters, such as Brumsky’s engagingly eccentric mother and outrageously nosy neighbor, more than compensate for the convoluted plot. Agent: John Silbersack, Trident Media Group. (Apr.)