Tradition of Deceit: A Chloe Ellefson Mystery

In Ernst’s exciting fifth Chloe Ellefson mystery set in 1980s Wisconsin (after 2013’s Heritage of Darkness), Chloe, who’s a curator at a living history museum, goes to Minneapolis to help her friend Ariel Grzegorczyk develop plans to revitalize the abandoned Washburn A Mill, the original home of General Mills, only to find a professor’s body hidden inside. Meanwhile in Milwaukee, Chloe’s cop boyfriend, Roelke McKenna, looks into the murder of his closest friend, Rick Almirez. Roelke’s obsessive search for the culprit provides most of the book’s power, as well as the tension, after he learns that a cop was involved in the killing. The history of Polish immigrants figures in both cases. Everybody has secrets in this action-filled cozy, including the female mill workers whose lives are chronicled in flashbacks to the early days of the mill. Agent: Andrea Cascardi, Transatlantic Literary. (Nov.)