Sound Proof

Chicago private detective Frank Dragovic is working downstate, going undercover at Midwest Music Madness, a festival targeted by a thief.

The corn is high in Iroquois County, the food deliciously Midwestern, the music old-time tunes and songs. But sour notes abound, and theft of musical instruments soon crescendos to blackmail and then- murder.

Are the thief, the blackmailer, and the murderer the same person? Two different people? Three? Sound Proof is a surprising revenge-plot mystery with a rural setting, eccentric characters, a touch of romance, and a Croatian-American detective.

As Frank investigates he’s surrounded by music everywhere, with suspects playing fiddles, banjos, guitars, autoharps, hammered dulcimers, bowed psaltries, and rhythm bones. And then there’s the pig. Richard. A 500-pound Yorkshire who likes to gnaw his way out of the pigpen and investigate what’s happening at Midwest Music Madness.

Can Frank Dragovic solve the complex whodunit before the festival ends and the suspects disperse - or will the rural musicians walk all over the man from Chicago? For those who enjoy ethnic detective novels, private-eye investigations, and mystery books with a revenge plot.

Barbara Gregorich’s works include the novel She’s on First as well as the nonfiction work, Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball, which won the SABR-Macmillan Award for Best Baseball Research of the Year. Sound Proof sees the return of Frank Dragovic, the private detective Gregorich first introduced in Dirty Proof.