An Eye for Murder

by Libby Fischer Hellmann and Hellmann, Libby Fischer

Book Overview

An elderly man in Chicago passes away with little more than contact information for Ellie Foreman in his coat pocket. Ellie cannot think of any connection to the deceased. Determined to find out who this man was, she unveils startling secrets about World War II, Chicago's Jewish community, and her own family.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 042518739X
• ISBN13: 9780425187395
• Release Date: December 2002
• Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime
• Length: 322 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 4.2" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

review

An interesting heroine with just the right sense of humor; someone it would be fun to know!

A good read with a likable protagonist

Documentary filmmaker Ellie Foreman's interest is piqued when she learns that an elderly stranger, Ben Sinclair, has died in a Chicago boarding house leaving a scrap of paper with her name on it among his possessions. Ellie's attempts to understand the deceased's interest in her, beginning with a meeting with the dead man's landlady, lead her into a much larger mystery: Sinclair's death is somehow connected with Nazi-era intrigue and Chicago politics, an illicit love affair, and more than one murder. While tracing Sinclair's steps on her own time, Ellie is hired to produce a campaign film for a senatorial candidate, the scion of a long-dead Chicago steel magnate, who may have skeletons of her own to conceal. Ellie's work on the campaign dovetails neatly into her private investigations, and she finds herself in increasingly hot water the closer she gets to the truth Sinclair had been trying to unravel before his death. Libby Hellmann's An Eye for Murder is the first in a series of mysteries featuring filmmaker Ellie Foreman. It's a good read with a rather complex plot that, however, can become confusing if one isn't paying strict attention. In Ellie Hellmann has created a likable protagonist with an interesting circle of friends and family: Ellie, the divorced mother of a twelve-year-old daughter, has a fiscally irresponsible ex-husband, an unusually but charmingly devoted gardener, a cigar-smoking character of a father, and, as we see blooming in this first book in the series, a love interest in the person of fifty-something David Linden. Hellmann saddles Ellie with some unfortunate vices: she has a history of kleptomania, and it is hinted that she makes occasional use of drugs (not to mention alcohol and tobacco). In future installments these imperfections may serve to round out her character, but in the present book they seemed tacked on rather than organic. I will be interested to read future books in the series to see how Ellie develops, and how her ostensibly safe career as a documentarian involves her in new difficulties. Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

More Chicago political machine than Nazi machine, but hey...

As my title suggests I found this to be more of a political thriller/murder mystery than a wartime/Nazi thriller, but it is a smashing read nonetheless. Hellman's discussions of place in the Chicago area and, get this, downstate Illinois, are accurate and refreshing. She does introduce characters and secondary plotlines which which remain underdeveloped. But as the previous review says, don't start this book unless you have time to finish it.

Don't start this unless you have time to fininsh it!

My title for my review says it all. I started this book and could not put it down until I had finished it. The story and the main character grabbed me from the first, and I found myself racing through the story to not only see the end, but see if my guesses were right. Well, on some I was right, on others, not! Still, I really enjoyed this book and applaud Ms. Hellmann from taking me away from this holiday cooking and shopping madness. I look forward to her next one.

A great story, excellent sense of place

This well written story has great characters and really brings Chicago alive. There are a couple of major themes, one centers around events that happened right after WWII, the other is contemporary. The dialogue is well done and the characters are sympathetic. My only comment would be that at the end things seemed rushed. I look forward to reading more books by this author.