Works by
Libby Fischer Hellmann
(Writer)
[1949 - ]

Anthologies

• Chicago Blues (2007), Libby Fischer Hellmann, ed.
  Nobody does Blues like Chicago. This collection of dark stories, from today's best Chicago crime fiction authors, captures the depths to which people sink when they run out of options. The emptiness and pain spawned by greed. The violence--or occasionally, the bittersweet redemption--that springs from a broken heart.
  
  The writers who live and breathe in Chicago make Chicago live and breathe in this stunning collection. Contributors include Barbara D'Amato, J. A. Konrath, Libby Fischer Hellmann, Marcus Sakey, Max Allan Collins, Michael Black, Sara Paretsky, Sean Chercover, Stuart Kaminsky, and others.

• Sisters on the Case: Celebrating Twenty Years of Sisters in Crime (2007)
  Anniversary anthology of 25 short stories by today's best women mystery writers, including: Annette Meyers, Barbara D'Amato, Carolyn Hart, Charlotte MacLeod, Claire Carmichael McNab, Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Eve K. Sandstrom, Kate Flora, Kate Grilley, Libby Fischer Hellman, Linda Grant, Margaret Maron, Medora Sale, Nancy Pickard, P.M. Carlson, Patricia Sprinkle, Rochelle Krich, Sara Paretsky, Sue Dunlap, Sue Henry, and more.

Fiction

The Ellie Foreman Mysteries

1. An Eye for Murder (2002) -- Winner Readers' Choice for Best First Novel, Nominee Anthony Award for Best First
   Ellie’s father, it turns out, had known Sinclair years earlier in a Jewish area of Chicago. During the war Sinclair had killed the head of the Nazi Bund on the North Side of the city. He then ran off to Europe and joined the Resistance. Others who knew Sinclair are attacked and killed. Ellie sets off on a search to discover why the old man had her name on that scrap of paper, while killers close in on her and her loved ones.

2. A Picture of Guilt (2003) -- Winner Readers' Choice Award for Best Traditional Novel; Finalist Ben Franklin Award for Mystery/Suspense
   The big news story in Chicago is the murder trial of Johnny Santoro, a dock worker whose girlfriend has been killed. Most Chicagoans are betting on a quick guilty verdict, but Ellie Foreman has doubts about his complicity-Santoro is strangely familiar to her. Checking back to the outtakes of a video project in progress while the murder took place, Ellie finds evidence that could save Santoro from a lifetime behind bars. It seems the perfect alibi. But the tape is compromised by strange radio interference and Santoro goes to jail.
   
   Almost immediately, Ellie's world begins to shift: a suspicious vehicle follows her, the Chicago mob shows up, and the FBI wants to question her. She doesn't have answers, but she has questions of her own about the radio transmissions. Everything indicates that someone wants something from her, something bigger than the Santoro case. If only she could figure out what it is... A Picture of Guilt follows Ellie's award-winning debut in An Eye for Murder. Originally from Washington, DC, Libby Fischer Hellmann has lived in Chicago for 30 years and finds the contrast between the beautiful and the profane in that city a crime writer's paradise.

3. An Image of Death (2004)
   Who knew that a career in video documentaries could lead to crime? Such is the fate of Chicago's Ellie Foreman whose shoots hook her up with misdeeds past and present. Here she is producing a video about foster children that's being financed by a successful Chicago real estate developer. Her plans get thrown for a loop when a mysterious package appears at her door one winter night. Inside she finds a surveillance video showing the murder of a young woman. Who was this woman and what is her connection to Ellie? The cops shunt her aside, but the urgency she feels to find answers, coupled with her professional knowledge of film, compel her to sleuth despite the difficulties borne from a complex history with her lover, David. A little digging reveals that the murder victim was a courier with a dark history forged in Eastern Europe at the time of the Soviet Union's collapse. And a little more digging reveals dark happenings here at home, money laundering, and the deadly price of dealing in diamonds....

4. A Shot to Die For (2005) -- Winner Readers' Choice Award for Best Traditional Novel
   Returning from a video shoot, Ellie Foreman assists a woman abandoned at a rest stop only to witness her murder moments later. When the victim's family begs Ellie to help, she soon finds herself caught in the crosshairs of a killer.

1. Easy Innocence (2008)
   When pretty, smart Sara Long is found bludgeoned to death, it's easy to blame the man with the bat.
   
   But Georgia Davis -- former cop and newly-minted PI -- is hired to look into the incident at the behest of the accused's sister, and what she finds hints at a much different, much darker answer. It seems the privileged, preppy schoolgirls on Chicago's North Shore have learned just how much their innocence is worth to hot-under-the-collar businessmen. But while these girls can pay for Prada pricetags, they don't realize that their new business venture may end up costing them more than they can afford.

2. Doubleback (October 2009 release)
   Little Molly Messenger is kidnapped on a sunny June morning. Three days later she’s returned, apparently unharmed. Molly’s mother, Chris, is so grateful to have her daughter back that she’s willing to overlook the odd circumstances.
   
   A few days later, the brakes go out on Chris’s car.
   
   An accident? Maybe. Except that it turns out that Chris, the IT manager at a large Chicago bank, may have misappropriated three million dollars. Not convinced that his daughter is safe, Molly’s father hires PI Georgia Davis to follow the money and investigate Chris’s death.
   
   Doubleback reunites PI Georgia Davis with video producer Ellie Foreman. The two women track leads from Northern Wisconsin to an Arizona border town, where illegal immigrants, smuggled drugs, and an independent contractor called Delton Security come into play. Georgia and Ellie go to great lengths to find the truth, and Georgia discovers that you can cross a line, but sometimes you have to double back.