An Image of Death

By Libby Fischer Hellmann

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...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Libby Fischer Hellmann
• Release date: Jun 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9781938733055

Libby Fischer Hellmann

Libby Fischer Hellmann left a career in broadcast news in Washington, DC and moved to Chicago 35 years ago, where she, naturally, began to write gritty crime fiction. Twelve novels and twenty short stories later, she claims they’ll take her out of the Windy City feet first. She has been nominated for many awards in the mystery and crime writing community and has even won a few. With the addition of Jump Cut in 2016, her novels include the now five-volume Ellie Foreman series, which she describes as a cross between “Desperate Housewives” and “24;” the hard-boiled 4-volume Georgia Davis PI series, and three stand-alone historical thrillers that Libby calls her “Revolution Trilogy.” Last fall The Incidental Spy,  a historical novella set during the early years of the Manhattan Project at the U of Chicago was released. Her short stories have been published in a dozen anthologies, the Saturday Evening Post, and Ed Gorman’s “25 Criminally Good Short Stories” collection.  In 2005 Libby was the national president of Sisters In Crime, a 3500 member organization dedicated to the advancement of female crime fiction authors. More at http://libbyhellmann.com * She has been a finalist twice for the Anthony, three times for Foreword Magazines Book of the Year, the Agatha, the Shamus, the Daphne and has won the Lovey multiple times.

Reviews for An Image of Death

[darcia_10 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The plot drives this story more than the characters do. Hellmann does a great job with the Eastern European aspect of the story, where she touches on human trafficking and forced prostitution. The one problem I had was that Ellie Foreman, the main character, kept referring to some sort of nameless danger she got into in the past that, from what I gathered, had to do with her video editing career and the police. However, that was never clarified. Consequently, the character and aspects of the story felt incomplete.

[aethercowboy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The only thing I really liked about An Image of Death was that it ended.While reading this book, I was constantly amazed by how badly written it was. Is this the state of modern mysteries? It seems they're all people writing parallel versions of themselves doing freelance investigation while the local police take turns playing good cop/bad cop.Oh, you're a former video producer, Ms. Hellmann? Well, so is your protagonist. Oh, you live in Chi-town, Ms. Hellmann? Well, so does your protagonist. If I were a gambling man, I'd also guess that Ms. Hellmann is Jewish (like her protagonist), and hates it when people spell her last name "h-e-l-l-m-a-n," or just calls her "Libby Hellmann." Maybe she's a single mom with past run-ins with Johnny Law, too!Before I talk about how utterly horrible this book is, I'd like to address one plus side: Hellmann definitely knows Chicago. Of course, when most people know a town that well, they usually become cartographers, which doesn't require any amount of literary merit, just the ability to draw accurate scale lines in the right place.I read on the cover that her first book was nominated for an Anthony award!? And what's this? A blurb from William Kent Kreuger, multiple Anthony Award winner: "...mysteries don't get any better than this." I'll assume that the ...'s replaced the word 'amateur,' otherwise, I'd not value Mr. Kreuger's integrity enough to even consider reading his work, if he thinks that Hellmann's work is the pinnacle of perfection.The book itself is about Ellie Foreman (note the similar patterns of the name Ellie and Libby; Foreman and Hellmann) who one day gets a video of a woman being murdered. She then takes it to the police, but has to meddle in the meantime, while she's doing a video editing project for some halfway house project for foster children.The problems with the book are many, and it just starts with the obvious pseudo-autobiographical nature of the work. It continues with the fact that throughout the book, the protagonist, a video editor, spends very little time actually doing her job. She goes to lunch a lot, visits her Dad a lot, bugs the police a lot, and has random epiphanies a lot. But, not so much on the video editing. And, for a professional video editor, you would think that she'd know not to pause a tape at a critical moment, as, according to one of the other video editor characters in the book, it ruins the integrity. After hearing this once, she goes on and does it with another tape containing vital information a second time, at another crucial scene. Wow!When Ellie isn't busy damaging evidence, she's making it painfully obvious that she's Jewish (and makes it obvious when other people AREN'T); or she's talking about how she met her boyfriend because her dad had a fling with his mom; or she's fluffing her narrative prose by making comments that make me think she has an Electra complex; or she's having lunch; or she's trash-talking McDonald's or Starbucks; or she's making a comment about some bit of technology that makes her look like a dinosaur Luddite; or she's bumbling around Chicago while the next piece of the puzzle gets shoved (sometimes quite literally) into her hands. And when she's not working, or doing this, we have long, long passages of exposition, or unnecessary Rod & Don dialogues (also known as: "As you know, Bob...") which exist solely for the benefit of the less-than-sharp reader. The book also shows off how much Hebrew, German, and Russian the author knows, by giving you an italic word, and then defining it. Like, how the protagonist's father uses a Hebrew word with his Jewish daughter, and then translates it to English for her. "Gee, thanks, Dad! You've been using that word all my life, and just now do I find out what it means!"And so I won't spoil the ending for you, let me just tell you: it's weak.I know why Hellmann wrote her books from a first-person perspective: so she could blame all the flaws in the prose on Foreman. "That's just the way Ellie thinks," I could hear her say. "She just starts free-associating, and then she finds what she's looking for." And, sure, I'll admit, characters can think like that, but authors are the ones who create them, and chronicle their tales. Is it too much to ask for more quality prose, less exposition, less dialogue for the sake the audience, and more believability in Ellie's voice?So, if you want a poorly written pseudo-mystery that won't challenge your intellect in any way, shape or form, then by all means, go ahead and read An Image of Death. And while you're at it, read the other of the four Ellie Foreman books, and the two Georgia Davis books. I'll personally wait for Hellmann to write a decent mystery in which the protagonist is more Sherlock than Shylock.In the meantime, I think I'd rather just spend my time perusing the Rand McNally street map for Chicago.

[smilee306 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book. I just started getting into mysteries in the last few years, and I enjoy when they are well crafted and give a real sense of location and story. An Image of Death does just that - the descriptions of the Chicago neighborhoods were what I was really missing in my last reviewed book, [Primitive]. Even though I've never seen Chicago, I could picture each location because of the time taken to give details about the locales. I also thought the story was really engaging - I wanted to know what was going to happen next. I also cared enough about the characters to want to know what happens after this, and what happened before. Unlike the previous reviewer, I appreciated that Hellmann didn't take forever to catch us up on previous books - I felt that this way the story stood on its own, but also drove me to find more of the Ellie Foreman Mysteries. One of my pet peeves in mysteries is the tendency to remind the reader every time who the main character is and why they're doing what they're doing - I tend to find it tedious after the first few books. I thought Hellmann found a great way to give enough information to understand the characters without bogging down the story, and to make us want to find out more in the end. In fact, the only negative I found was actually the cover design - I know, don't judge, but if I had seen this cover on the library or book store shelf, I would have walked right by. The grainy picture with the cheesy fake neon? The other cover that Amazon pulls up was a much pretty picture, if less related to the story, and it would make me more likely to pick the book up. Notwithstanding, I found this book thoroughly entertaining and will look for more from the author in the future.

[phantasma_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is not the kind of mystery I usually enjoy. I like my novels to have plenty of humor and I prefer a less formal writing style. That said, this was a very good book for the kind of mystery it is. I think people who like mysteries in general would truly enjoy it. The plot is quick and the characters feel generally realistic.I thought the Russian angle was a little strained, but it still worked for me. I also had trouble with the shift in narration. I think the whole thing might have been better written in the third person, but it's still definitely readable and understandable. The novel went a little slowly for me. I think this was due to the fact that it's part of a series and that it didn't do a good job of recapping the previous novels. So, if you haven't read the others, you probably should not start with this one. But I'm certainly not saying don't read it at all.