Murder locales mundane and exotic
Solving cases here, there and at points in between

August 3, 2003

By Dick Adler
Chicago Tribune

A Picture of Guilt
By Libby Fischer Hellmann
Poisoned Pen, $24.95

The world of everyday work is often glossed over or ignored in mysteries and thrillers, which is why Libby Fischer Hellmann's second book about Chicago-based video producer Ellie Foreman deserves extra attention.

Almost without thinking about the possible consequences, Foreman decides to make public an institutional video that provides an alibi for a murder suspect. That decision winds up costing her income when lawyer and insurance-company clients decide she crossed a line.

Facing the sudden collapse of her business, Foreman—who is raising a 13-year-old daughter without much help from an imprudent ex-husband—doesn't sit in bed and whine, or borrow money from her father, or even accept help from her banker lover. She sets out to prove she did the right thing, even if the original gesture failed to keep the accused man, Johnny Santoro, out of prison.

Her first stop on a Monday morning is the East Side docks along Lake Michigan, where Santoro was one of the group of longshoremen who showed up in search of the dwindling supply of jobs:

"'Sorry, guys, that's all I need for today,' the man with the clipboard said. `But I got a barge of steel coils coming in Friday. Be work for about a dozen of youse.'

"A collective grumble went up from the men, but it was surprisingly docile, as if they were used to disappointment."

Later in this smart and exciting story, after several more deaths and the obligatory attempt on her own life, Foreman visits the sleek offices of a big oil company. "I was back on familiar turf," she tells us. "The rules of engagement in the corporate world are predictable. I'd spent years learning them."

But Hellmann knows a lot of other things as well, about what people are willing to live and die for, and that knowledge makes her books shine.

All content © Libby Fischer Hellmann.