The HBS Author's Spotlight SHOWCASES Libby Fischer Hellmann's New Book: High Crimes.
Libby is an acclaimed crime writer. She is the author of the Georgia Davis and the Ellie Foreman series.
High Crimes
The Georgia Davis PI Series Book 5
Author: Libby Fischer Hellmann
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How do you solve a murder when there are 42,000 suspects? That’s the task facing Chicago PI Georgia Davis, hired to hunt down those behind the assassination of Resistance leader Dena Baldwin at a demonstration fourteen months after the 2016 election. The gunman, on a nearby hotel rooftop, dies within minutes of the shooting. As Georgia sifts through Dena’s 42,000 Facebook followers, she discovers that unknown enemies hiding behind fake profiles have infiltrated the group. She finds others who will do whatever it takes—including murder—to shield right-wing, wealthy elites. Threats and bruises have never frightened Georgia, but she’s side-swiped by the sudden reappearance of her mother, who abandoned her when she was a child. Can she survive a family crisis at the same time she pursues killers whose only goal is to protect themselves?
Excerpt from High Crimes
Chapter 1
“Where is she, Curt? Dena’s never late.” The ten minutes of generally accepted grace time had passed, but Dena was nowhere in sight. Ruth had texted and called every two minutes, but her messages went unanswered.
Curt, a bear of a man with shaggy brown hair, beard, and puppy-dog eyes, shrugged. “She’s probably stuck in traffic.” He gestured to the crowd from the wings of the stage. “Look at these folks! Did you ever imagine . . . all this?”
Ruth dared to look out at the masses. Her breath caught. Thousands of people were streaming into Grant Park, three hundred sprawling acres in the middle of downtown Chicago. They were heading to the bandstand shell and stage at the southern end of the park. Ruth remembered the last time she’d been here, an unusually balmy November night in 2008. Obama had just won the election. It was a miracle that the entire world had shared.
Now, though, icy puffs of air aided by a stiff January wind frosted her cheeks and seeped through her coat. The crowd size wasn’t nearly as large as Obama’s, but people seemed buoyed by the cold, cheering and waving signs that proclaimed, “We Are the Resistance,” “Never Give Up,” and other political bromides. Some wore the knitted kitten hats that had become popular after the election. Most were grinning and joking as if the occasion were a rock concert or football game rather than a demonstration.
Curt peered up at the sky. “I hope there’s a drone up there filming this. Maybe we could get the footage to use on social media.”
Ruth glanced up, twisting the shoulder strap of her bag. “Yeah, good idea. But where is Dena?”
Another man, lean and lanky, the Jeff to Curt’s Mutt, fiddled with a microphone stand on the center of the stage. He looked over at Ruth. “Chill. Traffic is shitty.”
Ruth shook her head and waved her cell in the air. “She always picks up. But it’s going to voice mail.”
“Probably on the el.” DJ ran a hand through his long blond ponytail. “But you’re right. We can’t wait forever. What do you want to do?”
“Give her another minute. Dena would never blow this off, DJ,” Curt said. “Not after all her work.”
A flood of memories washed over Ruth. The two of them in Dena’s condo, full of plans and purpose. Working twenty-four- hour days, planning, eating junk food in the omnipresent blue- white light of their laptops. Hard to believe it had been more than a year.
“This is just the beginning!” DJ grinned. “After today, we’ll have a real shot at accomplishing something.”
But what if something happened? Dena had been getting those creepy calls. Ruth pushed the thought away. Lots of prominent people got crank calls, Dena had said dismissively. And she—they, Dena made sure to say—were famous. “Almost.” They would laugh.
Some people in the crowd, clearly impatient, started to clap rhythmically. A signal for the show to begin. Others joined in. Ruth, DJ, and Curt exchanged glances. A wave of nausea climbed up Ruth’s throat.
“Okay,” Curt said. “Color me officially worried.”
“Relax, people,” DJ said. “Nothing bad’s happened to Dena. She’s indestructible.”
“She was fine yesterday,” Ruth said. “She was pumped.” “Did she go over what she was going to say?” DJ asked. “Of course. She practiced—you know—rehearsed it with me.
And Curt.” She nodded at him. “Well, you’re número dos,” Curt said. Was there a hint of resentment in his voice? Ruth wondered. “If she doesn’t get here soon, you’re on deck.”
Ruth let out a tiny cry of terror. “I can’t!” “Why not?” “There are thousands of people out there. They—they’re expecting Dena.” DJ slipped his hands in his pockets. “The show must go on.” “There are way too many people. I’d rather die!” “You have to try. Look, at least start. You’re the only other person who knows what to say. You’ve been with Dena from the beginning.”
“What do they say?” DJ added. “Pretend all the people in the crowd are naked?”
Curt waved a hand. “No. Just focus on what they need to hear. And feel. And do. That’s what Dena would say.”
“Yeah, but she’s experienced at—at public speaking,” Ruth said. “I’ve never done this before. I’m the backstage person.”
DJ said, “Look, we’ll help you out. And Dena will probably get here while you’re talking. As soon she does, you’re off the hook.”
Ruth’s eyes raked the crowd. “Oh my God. I really have to do this.”
A whispery whine made them gaze upward. Curt grinned. “I knew it. Thar she blows!”
Ruth could just make out a speck in the sky. “A drone?”
He nodded. “Maybe CNN, huh? Hope they’ll give us their video.” “It’s probably just channel five.’”
Most of the crowd was clapping now. Ruth could tell they were edgy.
“You ready?” DJ adjusted the mic. He tilted his chin in the direction of the crowd. “They are.”
Author Genre: Mystery & Thrillers, Literature & Fiction
Website: Libby Fischer Hellmann
Author's Blog: Libby Fischer Hellmann
Twitter: @libbyhellmann
E-Mail: lfh@libbyhellmann.com
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Amazon Author Profile
Author Description: Libby Fischer Hellmann is a critically acclaimed crime writer loved by readers the world over for her compulsively readable thrillers and strong female characters. Her fast-paced crime fiction spans 14 novels and over 20 short stories. She has also edited a popular crime fiction anthology called Chicago Blues. Her newest work, "War, Spies, and Bobby Sox: Stories About World War Two At Home" was released in March, 2017, and promptly won the IPPY Silver Medal in the war/military category.
With critics describing her work as "masterful" and "meticulously researched", it's not hard to see why Libby's thrilling and richly varied crime novels have won numerous awards. Libby is exceptionally committed to her work, and in 2005-2006 she was the National President of Sisters in Crime, a 3,400+ member organization dedicated to strengthening the voice of female mystery writers.
Libby started out in broadcast news, beginning her career as an assistant film editor for NBC News in New York before moving back to DC to work with Robin MacNeil and Jim Lehrer at N-PACT, the public affairs production arm of PBS. Retrained as an assistant director when Watergate broke, Libby helped produce PBS's night-time broadcast of the hearings. She went on to work for public relations firm Burson-Marsteller in Chicago in 1978, where she stayed until she left to found Fischer Hellmann Communications in 1985.
Originally from Washington, D.C.--where, she says, "When you're sitting around the dinner table gossiping about the neighbors, you're talking politics"-- Libby earned a Masters Degree in Film Production from New York University and a BA in History from the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to writing, Libby writes and produces videos, and conducts speaker training programs in platform speaking, presentation skills, media training and crisis communications.
Libby's best-selling novels have won widespread acclaim, with her first novel, An Eye for Murder, nominated for several awards and described by Publisher's Weekly as "a masterful blend of politics, history, and suspense."
An Eye for Murder introduced Ellie Foreman, a video producer and single mother who went on to star in five more novels in a series described by Libby as "a cross between Desperate Housewives and 24." Libby's second series followed the Chicago PI Georgia Davis, a no-nonsense detective who has been featured in four books so far. In addition to her hugely popular series, Libby has also written four standalone thrillers in diverse settings and historical periods Through her "Revolution Trilogy," (Set the Night on Fire, A Bitter Veil, and Havana Lost) we meet young activists during the late Sixties, a young American woman who marries and moves to Tehran, and a female Mafia boss who chases power at the expense of love.
Author's Book List
Jump Cut
- The Ellie Foreman Mysteries Book 5Chicago video producer Ellie Foreman has been absent from thriller author Libby Fischer Hellmann's repertoire for almost a decade. Now, in Jump Cut, she's back...and is soon entangled in a web of espionage, murder, and suspicion that threatens to destroy what she holds most dear.
Hired to produce a candy-floss profile of Chicago-based aviation giant Delcroft, Ellie is dismayed when company VP Charlotte Hollander trashes the production and cancels the project. Ellie believes Hollander was spooked by shots of a specific man in the video footage. But when Ellie arranges to meet the man to find out why, he is killed by a subway train before they can talk. In the confusion, she finds a seemingly abandoned pack of cigarettes with a flash drive inside that belonged to the now-dead man.
Ellie gets the drive's contents decrypted, but before long discovers she's under surveillance. Suspecting Delcroft and the ambitious Hollander are behind it, she's unconvinced when Hollander tells her the dead man was a Chinese spy. Ellie and her boyfriend, Luke, try to find answers, but they don't realize how far they have ventured into the dangerous echelons of hidden power-- where more lives are on the line?including their own.
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Nobody's Child
- Georgia Davis Series Book 4A bloodstained note left for PI Georgia Davis reveals the shocking existence of a half-sister she never knew about. Her sister, Savannah, is pregnant and begging for Georgia’s help. Determined to track her down, Georgia finds herself heading deep into the secretive and dangerous underworld of Chicago’s illegal sex trafficking business. She soon discovers that trafficking is just a small part of the horrifying and deadly situation in which her new sister is caught up. Even worse, as Georgia tries to extricate Savannah, she comes up against an old enemy determined to make sure neither woman will escape alive. In the fourth Georgia Davis novel, Georgia faces her toughest challenge yet—and one she might not survive.
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ToxiCity
- Georgia Davis Series #3Ten years before EASY INNOCENCE, PI Georgia Davis was a police officer on the force in a Chicago suburb. And while homicides are rare on the North Shore, three bodies turn up in quick succession--all of them dumped in waste disposal dumpsters or landfills. The investigations into the murders test the mettle and professionalism of a combined police task force. Along the way, they also test the strength of Georgia's relationship with one of the detectives working the case. While Georgia, her detective boyfriend Matt, and his sometime partner John Stone pit their skills against those of an inventive killer, the daughter of a real estate mogul-- who just happens to have her eye on Matt -- complicates matters. With Hellmann's 8th crime thriller and police procedural, TOXICITY is a prequel to the Georgia Davis PI series (EASY INNOCENCE and DOUBLEBACK).
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Doubleback
- Georgia Davis Series Book 2In Hellmann's 6th crime thriller, 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.
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Easy Innocence
- Georgia Davis Series Book 1When 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
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The Last Page
Barbara Adams, head of the Windbrook Library in suburban Chicago, has died, apparently from a fall down the stairs to the library's basement. But when Julia Fairbanks, her closest friend's daughter starts to poke around, she finds troubling emails that indicate Barbara was not the victim of a heart attack, but a vicious killer instead. Can Julia find the murderer? Or will she end up on The Last Page? This breezy mystery is a novella, approx. 20,000 words. It also includes two short stories by the authors, both from the acclaimed crime fiction anthology, CHICAGO BLUES.
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A Shot To Die For
- The Ellie Foreman Mysteries Book 4In this fourth crime thriller of the Ellie Foreman series, the Chicago documentary filmmaker finds herself in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Returning from a video shoot at the Lodge, a newly renovated, upscale resort, Ellie befriends a woman who claims her ride abandoned her at a highway rest stop. But Ellie’s kindness is brutally cut short when a pickup truck pulls up, the rear window opens, and the woman is shot dead.
Even with her history of sleuthing, Ellie is not eager to get involved. Then the victims’s family arrives and begs for information. When the second shooting occurs, Ellie decides to poke around on her own. She is soon drawn into the history of a wealthy and prominent family, deeply rooted in a magnificent mansion on the shores of the lake, and surrounded by an elaborate web of lies, murder, and family secrets that have plagued both them and the town for years—secrets that now place Ellie in the crosshairs of a killer.
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An Image of Death
- The Ellie Foreman Mysteries Book 3In the 3rd Ellie Foreman crime thriller a surveillance tape showing the murder of a young woman is left on Chicago documentary producer, Ellie Foreman's doorstep. When she hands the video to police, they're not interested in who the woman was. Except Officer Georgia Davis, who joins Ellie to solve the crime.
A little digging reveals that the murder victim was a diamond courier with a dark history forged in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the USSR. And a little more digging leads them back home to money laundering, shady real estate deals, and the deadly price of dealing in diamonds.
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A Picture of Guilt
- The Ellie Foreman Mysteries Book 2In Hellmann's 2nd crime thriller, 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 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…
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An Eye For Murder
- The Ellie Foreman Mysteries Book 1In Hellmann's debut crime thriller, the story begins in Prague in 1944 with a seemingly casual exchange. But in wartime, is any act, any one thing, trivial? Decades later, in contemporary Chicago, the consequences emerge through the medium of television. Documentary filmmaker Ellie Foreman gets a letter prompted by the success of her show "Celebrate Chicago." One viewer was the elderly Ben Sinclair. When he suddenly dies, his landlady Mrs. Fleischman finds Ellie's name among his effects and writes to her. Ellie, who hasn't a clue about a connection to Ben, is curious. And she agrees to help dispose of Ben Sinclair's possessions. She became a filmmaker to help people tell their stories. The books and wartime relics Ben left behind--will they be enough to tell his?
All too soon, Mrs. Fleischman dies. Then Ben's things are stolen from Ellie's suburban home. The single mom, working to move past her ex, doesn't know what to think. But she has to scramble for work and is soon embroiled in producing a campaign video for a steel magnate running for a Republican seat in the Illinois Senate. Despite these distractions, Ellie stays focused on her odd link to the dead man and turns to her father, a retired lawyer with deep roots in Chicago's Jewish community, for insights into the mystery of Ben Sinclair. In time, a terrifying scenario develops that reaches back into several pasts. From the political present of the North Shore to the buried memories of the city's ethnic neighborhoods, the components of Ben's story eventually merge into an explosive climax.
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The Day Miriam Hirsch Disappeared
- The Ellie Foreman MysteriesIn 1938 sixteen year old Jake Foreman spends his free time with his friend Barney Teitleman in Lawndale, a prosperous Jewish community on Chicago’s near west side. Jake develops a crush on Miriam Hirsch, an actress in the Yiddish theater who lives at the Teitleman’s boarding house, but Miriam only has eyes for Skull, who might or might not be a gangster. THE DAY MIRIAM HIRSCH DISAPPEARED was the first short story I wrote. Little did I know then that the story would become the “prequel” to my Ellie Foreman series. Or that the Ellie Foreman series would be the prequel to the Georgia Davis series. The story, which won the Bouchercon short story contest in 1999, was first published in the Bouchercon Program book. It was later published in ANTHOLOGY TODAY, where it also won a contest, and in the now defunct FUTURES MAGAZINE.
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Havana Lost
On the eve of the Cuban Revolution, headstrong 18-year-old Francesca Pacelli flees from her ruthless Mafia-boss father in Havana to the arms of her lover, a rebel fighting with Fidel Castro. Her father, desperate to send her to safety in the US, resorts to torture and blackmail as he searches the island for her.
So begins the first part of a spellbinding saga that spans three generations of the same family. Decades later, the family is lured back to Cuba by the promise of untold riches. But pursuing those riches brings danger as well as opportunity, and ultimately, Francesca’s family must confront the lethal consequences of their choices. From the troubled streets of Havana to the mean streets of Chicago, HAVANA LOST reveals the true cost of chasing power instead of love.
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A Bitter Veil
In Hellmann's 9th historical thriller, it all begins with a line of Persian poetry . . . Anna and Nouri, both studying in Chicago, fall in love despite their very different backgrounds. Anna, who has never been close to her parents, is more than happy to return with Nouri to his native Iran, to be embraced by his wealthy family. Beginning their married life together in 1978, their world is abruptly turned upside down by the overthrow of the Shah, and the rise of the Islamic Republic.
Under the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Republican Guard, life becomes increasingly restricted and Anna must learn to exist in a transformed world, where none of the familiar Western rules apply. Random arrests and torture become the norm, women are required to wear hijab, and Anna discovers that she is no longer free to leave the country.
As events reach a fevered pitch, Anna realizes that nothing is as she thought, and no one can be trusted…not even her husband.
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Set the Night on Fire
In Hellmann's 7th crime thriller and her first historical novel, someone is trying to kill Lila Hilliard. During the Christmas holidays she returns from running errands to find her family home in flames, her father and brother trapped inside. Later, she is attacked by a mysterious man on a motorcycle. . . and the threats don't end there.
As Lila desperately tries to piece together who is after her and why, she uncovers information about her father's past in Chicago during the volatile days of the late 1960s . . . information he never shared with her, but now threatens to destroy her.
Part crime thriller, part historical novel, and part love story, Set the Night on Fire paints an unforgettable portrait of Chicago during a turbulent time: the riots at the Democratic Convention . . . the struggle for power between the Black Panthers and SDS . . . and a group of young idealists who tried to change the world.
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The Murder of Katie Boyle
- Nice Girl Does Noir Book 1My two series protagonists, video producer Ellie Foreman and PI Georgia Davis, are very different people, but I love them both. They worked together in DOUBLEBACK (2009), but I'm often asked how they originally met. Georgia made an appearance in A PICTURE OF GUILT, and then more substantively in AN IMAGE OF DEATH when she was still a cop, but they already had a passing acquaintance. How they met is explained in this short story, written and published in 2009. The story was published in a limited numbered edition and can also be found in print and on audio in my short story collection, NICE GIRL DOES NOIR.
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