"Chicago PI Dek Elstrom is called into action when a man acquitted of his wife's murder asks Dek to investigate the strange circumstances around her death. A shocking chain of events occur after midnight one night on a quiet suburban street in West Chicago. The first neighbor hears a woman scream. The second sees the lights in the Tripps' house being switched on, one by one, room after room. The third receives a call from a voice he doesn't recognize,...

The “well-crafted seventh mystery featuring wily, wise-cracking Chicago PI Dek Elstrom . . .  [a] delightfully eccentric detective series” (Publishers Weekly).
 
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...

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 the candidate fro US senate. A Heavily-disguised woman hires Chicago private investigator 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 fraom him for murder. A sheriff's deputy wants Dek arrested....

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...