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EYE FOR MURDER, AN
by Libby Fischer Hellmann
Berkley, December 2002
316 pages
$6.50
ISBN: 042518739X


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

I was biased in favor of this book before I read it. Much of the action takes place about two miles from where I grew up, and the heroine lives in the community where I've been spending summers. However, I did not need any bias to be thoroughly taken with this book's complicated and riveting story.

Ellie Freeman is a producer of documentaries; her program, "Celebrate Chicago," has won her a bit of local fame. She is faced with a conundrum when a man, found dead in his boarding house, leaves among his personal possessions a paper with Ellie's name on it. The landlady writes to Ellie, hoping that she might be a relative or friend. Ellie, who knows nothing of the man, comes to the boarding house, where the landlady takes her to the room of the dead man, Ben Sinclair. The first clue Ellie finds is a Zippo lighter made in the 1930s. In the first of a series of coincidences, Ellie's father recognizes the lighter as one belonging to a man he knew during World War II, a man nicknamed Skull, who is now known as Ben Sinclair.

Hellman has several balls to juggle. She drops only a couple.

Ellie is hired by Marian Iverson, a Republican candidate for the senate, to make a campaign film about her. Though it is somewhat against her political principles (she being of the "revolutionary" generation of the sixties), Ellie agrees to make the film, because she needs the money, her ex-husband having told her that a stock in which he had invested had tanked and that he won't be able to keep up his child support payments.

It's hard to say anything about the plot without giving some crucial elements away. Suffice it to say that Ellie becomes involved in the world of the neo-Nazis and the post World War II Jewish culture in Chicago. She encounters murder and violence -- both past and present; however, she also acquires a new love interest in the son of one of the victims.

Hellman manages the plot skillfully, although there are a few problems of believability in the final chapters. When Ellie realizes that her car is being followed, she drives down a dark street and then to an area of deserted warehouses. One would think a sensible person might drive to a well lighted area or even to a police station. When her father realizes that she is in danger, he gives her a gun for protection. Ellie tells him she's never used a gun. Three sentences are devoted to the use of a firearm. It's a little hard to believe that an experienced soldier would think that three sentences would qualify someone to use a lethal weapon.

What seems to have become obligatory when the detective is an amateur and a female is a long scene of physical jeopardy. This is especially tedious when the point of view is first person, so it is obvious that the character is going to survive. Ellie is subject to cuts, and beatings, and threats while the murderer lays out in great detail what an excellent plan to take over the world is afoot.

However, having voiced those reservations, I would still say that this is a very engrossing mystery and one with a chilling message about the persistence of hate.

Reviewed by Mary Elizabeth Devine, January 2003

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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