The good stuff! A quirky, wise cracking detective is in way over his head and he's not even sure how he got there. With the help of a few oddball friends, and to the chagrin of the local establishment, he might just manage to make it out alive.

Hidden Graves (The Dek Elstrom Mysteries #6) by Jack Fredrickson is a smart, fun mystery that delivers on all accounts.

Dek Elstrom, a down-on-his-luck P.I. (and isn't that the best kind?) lives in one of the most crooked, "foul and festering" suburbs of Chicago, where he makes his home in the turret of a castle that was never finished and happens to be situated across the lawn from city hall.

Dek finds himself even more at odds with the authorities than usual when a mystery woman hires him to check on the whereabouts of three people in far away locations. It quickly becomes obvious that somebody is up to something but by then Dek is in too deep to walk away. Shady local politics, rampant corruption, and long hidden secrets all come in to play. Don't let the politics angle turn you off, this one is a fun page-turner from start to finish.

Reminiscent of Donald E. Westlake's humorous standalone novels and, to a lesser extent, Laurence Sanders' Archy McNally series. Fans of Jerry Kennealy's Nick Polo series might also enjoy it.

Some of the language and situations might be offensive to sensitive readers but overall it falls well within a PG rating.

Thanks to netgalley for the opportunity to have read this.  This is the sixth novel in the Dek Elstrom series, and the first I’ve read so far, but I will fix that promptly.  There was perhaps a few references to the previous books I missed, but I think that was very minor.  Recommended.

Private Investigator Dek Elstrom is being framed for a murder he didn't commit. An older woman, wearing a wig and disguIsing herself, paid him to find 3 men. One was recently killed in a bomb blast, one has been living off the grid, and the 3rd man has now disappeared. All 3 men were living under alias names.

While Dek is traveling and discovering the men who don't exist, the older lady disappears ... and winds up in the back of Dek's jeep. Knowing that he's being set up, the body is then dumped into the river.

A sheriff's deputy wants him arrested. Someone else wants him dead. And then there's the lady in a wheelchair who hasn't spoken to anyone in years ... what does she want?

All Dek wants is to stay alive ...and out of prison.

And it all seems to be connected to crooked politics in Cook County, Illinois where the dead vote on who lives and who dies ... and who gets elected.

This was a pretty good read. The only real complaint I have is that there was so much redundancy. Everytime Dek spoke to someone, he repeated the whole story.... again and again .

Dek's character is a mixture of humor and slanted eyes. Humor when nothing else seems to work ..and besides, he is a smart aleck. The slanted eyes when he was serious and done playing around. He has recently begun dating his ex-wife and I enjoyed their banter. She's a very rich woman, but you'd never know it. There is also the female investigative journalist that wants a story ... but then she gets too close.

The story premise was good and the ending left no doubt of who, what, and why. Quite a surprise!

Many thanks to the author / Severn House / and Netgalley for the digital copy of HIDDEN GRAVES. Opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

A philanthropic and trustworthy politician? You decide.

Dek Ekstrom is a PI who has lost his licence to practice due to a fraud in his past. He lives in a five storey turret, built by his 'lunatic bootlegger’ grandfather, which he is now making habitable.

Whilst Dek is engaged, Tim Wade, a candidate for the Senate, is getting a nasty surprise from a skeleton with a tomahawk!

Dek is just about getting by, working to identify members of a sorority alumni club all, apparently, permanently under the influence, and all called Bipsie, so they don't have to remember names. When he gets a mysterious phone call from a woman wanting him to trace three identified men, he jumps at the chance; not least because it will bring in four thousand dollars.

When he arrives at the home of Gary Halvorson in Tucson, Arizona, he finds the property empty, smelling strongly of bleach, but with traces of what appears to be blood. Halvorson has rented the house for twenty years, but neither the landlord nor the neighbours have ever seen him.

The second subject, David Arlin, of Laguna Beach is killed when his house blows up before Dek can even get there and the third, Dainsto Runney, is missing from a small town in Oregon.

Dek suspects foul play and this is confirmed when he is set up for murder. What follows is an enjoyable read with interesting characters and some humour. The reader is kept guessing until the end and, as always, this is a mark of a good crime thriller.

My only criticism of the novel is that the protagonist portrayed as a disgraced PI/Detective etc. at war with the authorities, seems a little tired but this didn't detract from what is a fast-paced and enjoyable read.

Pashtpaws

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

First Sentence: Three minutes and twenty-three seconds before the skeleton came at him with an axe, the candidate for US Senate stood grim, trim and confident behind a mahogany lectern set on the freshly hacked weeks of an abandoned farm.

After the US Senate candidate publically embarrasses himself, he goes into complete hiding. An anonymous, heavily disguised woman hires Dek to travel to three Western States looking for men who don’t seem to exist. And someone is trying very hard to frame him for murder, or make him a victim himself. Can Dek put the pieces together?

Starting out with a good hook is important, and boy; does this have a good hook! It also has Fredrickson’s voice and wry humor—“‘What’s the matter with your right hand?’ she asked. ‘I pulled it out to show her the patchwork of Band-aids. ‘It got damaged.’ ‘Your Band-Aids have cartoon characters on them.’ There was nothing wrong with her eyesight.”—and his use of description—“Outside, the setting sun was beginning to gild the waves in the ocean.”

Dek is an interesting, well-drawn character about whose past history we learn as we go. That he is surrounded by a unique assortment of supporting characters gives him dimension and balance to the drama; occasionally too much so. Dek’s relationship with his ex-wife Amanda is an interesting one and one that changes/develops with each book.

Fredrickson’s imagery is very well done—“Curbside girls were wobbling home, a few bucks richer, a few hundred years older.” However, one must, once again, criticize the overuse of chapter-end cliffhangers and portents which are so unnecessary that they become annoying for their predictable presence—“I told her that would be just about right, because at the time I believed it.” Dropping the second half of that sentence would have been more suspenseful, and more effective. This is true of every one of them.

“Hidden Graves” is a very enjoyable read with an excellent twist. It’s another good addition to a well-done series.

HIDDEN GRAVES (PI-Dek Elstrom-Illinois-Contemp) – G+
Fredrickson, Jack – 6th in series
Severn House – Feb 2017