An extortion letter arrives at Crystal Waters, one of Chicago's wealthiest gated communities. It makes no specific threats, gives no instructions, demands only that $50,000 be gotten ready—-chump change for an enclave where the cheapest house is worth three million. It's easy to see it as harmless—-a note from a nut. Then a mansion explodes. The homeowners panic, and want it hushed up. If word gets out that a bomber is targeting Crystal Waters, their multimillion-dollar homes will become worthless, a last catastrophe for people strung out from living the good life too well. They hire Dek Elstrom to investigate. Dek Elstrom used to soar high, too, when he lived with his multimillionaire wife at Crystal Waters, but that was before the dominos of his life tipped over and his ex-wife threw him out. Now reduced to living in a crumbling stone turret, bankrupt of everything but attitude, he's not even his own ideal choice for the job. He's too broke, however, to question the motives of a gift-horse client. He needs the money—-and the chance to reconnect with his ex-wife. Another bomb goes off, and Dek realizes the culprit must be someone who is angry, needs money, and used to live at Crystal Waters. Then he realizes something else. He himself is the prime suspect. A sly and clever caper among the richest of the rich, A Safe Place for Dying is for fans of Carl Hiaasen and Robert Crais.

A Safe Place for Dying, the first in Jack Fredrickson’s highly acclaimed Dek Elstrom mystery series, was nominated for the Shamus Award for Best First Novel. Now, Chicago P.I. Dek Elstrom is back in an electrifying new mystery. A lawyer calls Dek with a fast, seven-hundred dollar proposition. A dead client named Dek to execute her will. No matter that Dek didn’t know the woman. No matter, too, that the woman’s estate was only worth a few hundred. Happens all the time, the lawyer said. To Dek Elstrom, broke and huddling in a cold stone turret in the middle of February, the sound of seven hundred falling down his chimney is louder than his voice of reason. He agrees, heads up to a hamlet ten miles north of nowhere. But instead of finding an easy-to-close estate, he finds blood and the markers of a shattered life. And something worse: links to the darkest part of his own past. He races to chase down leads to the killer, and his own ghost…before the dead woman is killed again.

Sweetie Fairbairn, the doyenne of Chicago society, is known for big-hearted philanthropy and magnificent soirees in her penthouse high atop one of the city's premier boutique hotels. Dek Elstrom is hired by a mysterious man in a long limousine to investigate the death of a clown. Was it suicide—or murder? What is the connection between the dead clown and Sweetie?

Dek Elstrom is back. Bad things are surfacing in Rivertown, in a huge hole in a block of bungalows; in the river, where the dam trapped what should never have been in the water. And from the past, where secrets long buried have risen again, to kill. Then comes a phone call from a dead man, and the sudden disappearance of almost everyone Dek ever held close. A trail leads north, to the end of Michigan, past the chop of the angry waters beyond, to an ice swept island most everyone wants to forget. But there are no answers there, just more questions, and another dead man pointing straight back to Rivertown, to the hole, and the dam, and secrets that want to keep killing in The Dead Caller from Chicago. "Everything I want in a mystery." —Nancy Pearl, National Public Radio on A Safe Place for Dying, A Pearl Pick "Jack Fredrickson is one hell of a writer. He has an ear for dead-on dialogue, and an unerring eye for compelling pace. In Dek Elstrom, he's created an investigator with a seductive one-two punch—a delectably smart mouth and a delightfully nimble brain. Believe me, no matter how hard your heart, there's going to be a soft spot in it for Hunting Sweetie Rose. This is a book that satisfies on every level from an author you can trust to deliver." —William Kent Krueger

An intriguing new mystery featuring Chicago private investigator Dek Elstrom Men are dying in Chicago. Not ordinary men, but rich men, powerful men, men who control the city. They are being murdered, quietly, skilfully. Dek Elstrom's ex-father-in-law, a major player in everything Chicago, is likely to be one of them. Amanda, Dek's ex-wife, wants him to investigate. Dek doesn't want this case - but Amanda persists, and Dek finally agrees, because that's what he always does with Amanda. He learns quickly that Amanda's father is lying. The man knows plenty and is talking about none of it. Is he about to become a victim? Or is he a killer?

Someone is trying to frame Chicago private investigator Dek Elstrom for murder in the latest intriguing mystery. It’s election season in corrupt Cook County, Illinois – where the dead vote on who lives and who dies. A skeleton’s hand spills out of an abandoned grain silo, aiming an axe at a candidate. A heavily-disguised woman hires PI Dek Elstrom to head west to find men with no pasts – and one with no present. While he’s away, someone dead comes calling to frame him for murder.>br> A sheriff’s deputy wants Dek arrested. Someone else wants him dead. No one knows what the woman who hasn’t spoken in decades wants. And Dek Elstrom? He wants to stay alive.

When the man who’s hired Dek Elstrom disappears, the private investigator’s search for his missing client unearths some shocking findings. The dead man is found spread-eagled on the top of a box car on an abandoned rail siding. He’s dressed in a $2000 suit, yet half his teeth are rotten and his skin is bad. Who was he … and how did he end up there? When he’s offered an exorbitant fee to photograph the scene, PI Dek Elstrom doesn’t ask many questions. But his photos reveal something there’s a witness to the murder, a tagger who’s returned to the scene to paint what he saw. His work quickly disappears. What is it that the mysterious graffiti artist wants the world to know? Then a second body shows up – and the case takes a shocking new twist …