Libby Fischer Hellmann
When 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.
...It begins in 1944 Prague, but the madness—and the murder—move on to contemporary Chicago where an old man has died. Then it goes to the North Shore suburbs where documentary filmmaker Ellie Fore-man gets a letter prompted by the success of her show Celebrate Chicago. The landlady of the dead Ben Sinclair has found Ellie's name among his effects. Why? Mrs. Fleischman is uneasy, and wants to know, moreover, if Ben could have been murdered.
...A 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
...4) Toxicity
Ten years ago, PI Georgia Davis was a police officer in a Chicago suburb. When 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 of the police force. They also test Georgia's relationship with one of the detectives. This dark crime thriller is a prequel to EASY INNOCENCE and DOUBLEBACK.
5) Doubleback
Little Molly Messenger is kidnapped on a sunny June morning. Three days later she's returned unharmed. Then the brakes go out on her mother's car. An accident? Except that her mother may have may have misappropriated three million dollars. Doubleback reunites PI Georgia Davis with video producer Ellie Foreman, who track leads from Chicago to Wisconsin to the Arizona border.
The big news story in Chi-cago 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
...In this fourth title in the Ellie Foreman mystery 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,
...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 pokes 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 too?
10) High Crimes
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
...Who knew that a career in video documentaries could lead to crime? Such is the fate of Chicago's Ellie Foreman whose shoots hook her up with misdeeds past and present. Here she is producing a video about foster children that's being financed by a successful Chicago real estate developer. Her plans get thrown for a loop when a mysterious package appears at her door one winter night. Inside she finds a surveillance video showing the murder of a young
...12) A bitter veil
There's nothing more mysterious than a locked box. Whether it's a literal strongbox, an empty coffin, the inner workings of a scientist's mind, or an underground prison cell, there are those who will use any means necessary to unlock the secrets of The Mystery Box.
With this anthology, bestselling author Brad Meltzer introduces twenty-one original stories from today's most prominent mystery writers. In Laura Lippman's "Waco 1982," a young reporter
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