AN IMAGE OF DEATH

An Image of Death
by Libby Fischer Hellman
304 pages
ISBN:1-59058-01-6
Poisoned Pen Press
January, 2004
$24.95

Ellie Foreman works as a producer of video documentaries. She manages to get herself involved in charitably making a video about foster children in the Chicago area by a successfully forceful female real estate developer. Resentfully and regrettably, Ellie begins to work on this, but a videotape is dropped at her door secretly one night and it is the tape of a woman being murdered. The police are interested, but have other more pressing investigations, so Ellie maneuvers herself into investigating this with the reluctant help of a caring police officer.

The pace of An Image of Death increases with each page. With the foster children adjustment into the regular social life of America, money laundering, the results of the breakdown of the Soviet Union, and dealing in diamonds, these threads were racing through this novel at break-neck speed.

Added to this is Ellie’s relationship with her ex-husband, her daughter, her father in a rest home, her Jewish heritage, and her questionable Jewish boyfriend, makes all this a complicated mixture that Ms. Hellman has successfully balanced.

This book is fast-moving and keeps your mind running even when you can’t read it. You don’t want to put this book down once you begin it. It has a magnetic appeal to every reader.

This is Libby Fischer Hellman’s third book in the Ellie Foreman series. She has already been nominated for awards for these books. When researching the author’s background, I found numerous similarities between Ellie and Libby. Both are single parents, both work as a video producer, hmmmm???………

I definitely look forward to the next book. Ellie Foreman is a reading friend that I enjoy revisiting again soon.