Silence the Dead

November 10, 2014
The opening of this solid whodunit, based on a real-life murder case, is certainly an attention getter. When the authorities exhume the corpse of Betty Jo Dean, who was shot to death in Grand Point, Ill., decades earlier at the age of 17, they see that she was buried only in her underwear. Grand Point’s mayor, Mac Bassett, who “had imagined all sorts of horrors,” insists that the fleshless, loose skull in the coffin is not Betty Jo’s. Flash back to 1982: on the last night of her life, Betty Jo hooks up with a new beau. The following day, after Betty Jo has gone missing and the beau is found dead, Chicago reporter Jonah Ridl arrives in Grand Point to investigate, only to learn that local law enforcement is concealing the truth. In the present, Bassett discovers that the cover-up is still active—and deadly. The ending is a bit of a letdown, but Fredrickson (The Dead Caller from Chicago and three other Dek Elstrom mysteries) does a decent job of portraying smalltown despair. Agent: John Silbersack, Trident Media Group.

December 1, 2014
Fredrickson has created this powerful novel by freshening up genre standbys. First is the murder that surfaces years after everyone thought the case was buried with the victim. Then there are the old boys who were around then and turn strange when anyone starts asking questions. And we have the hero, someone with personal and professional problems that he must solve at the same time as he resurrects the cold case. For reasons we can't suss out until the last few pages, small-town mayor Mac Bassett slights his failing restaurant to obsess over the killing of a high-school girl three decades ago. He learns that a reporter who covered the story was driven mad, a newspaper intern was killed in a suspicious car crash, and a bartender who heard too much drowned. The body count starts up again when the questions do. Fredrickson enriches his story by peopling it with sassy characterseven the jerks are people, not types. The revelations will not shock readers familiar with the genre. But after the ending comes another ending, this one with terrific force.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)