An Image of Death (Prime Crime Mysteries)

Rating:
Summary: Rich, complex mystery
Review: Another disappointment... It's no fun reading a book when you know the outcome right away. A plot twist once in awhile would have helped. The characterization of Ellie was difficult to believe. Her clingy relationship with her daughter was irritating enough, why did we have to suffer through hers with her boyfriend David, too? Characters than are capable of intimate relationships are much more interesting. Far too much of this series is spent on her personal issues, definitely not eough on the mystery!

Rating:
Summary: No mystery!!!
Review: Another disappointment... It's no fun reading a book when you know the outcome right away. A plot twist once in awhile would have helped. The characterization of Ellie was difficult to believe. Her clingy relationship with her daughter was irritating enough, why did we have to suffer through hers with her boyfriend David, too? Characters than are capable of intimate relationships are much more interesting. Far too much of this series is spent on her personal issues, definitely not eough on the mystery!

Rating:
Summary: Rich, complex mystery
Review: I've read all of Ms. Hellmann's work, and all have been wonderful. This may be her best work yet. The writing is polished, the prose of the back story especially evocative, the tale itself both sad and satisfying. Ellie continues to be a protagonist of real dimensions beset by very real personal problems. Although Chicago is always a marvelous character in Hellmann's work, here the story encompasses a much broader, more ambitious landscape in both time and geography, and the author does a superlative job of making it all vivid. I recommend this book highly.

Rating:
Summary: Thrilling and Engaging
Review: Libby Fisher Hellmann has a remarkable ability to tell the tale of ordinary people who rise to the challenge of extraordinary circumstances. AN IMAGE OF DEATH is a well told thriller.

The characters are clearly drawn. Ellie Foreman, must once again investigates a mystery, and what a mystery! It originates in Russia when a woman must overcome poverty, death, and betrayal to rebuild her life in a new country. That is just the beginning, and Ms. Hellmann takes us on a fascinating journey.

Rating:
Summary: Thrilling and Engaging
Review: When the Soviet Union collapsed, honorable soldiers turned to stealing just to feed their families. When one of these veterans dies, his wife finds out his best friend betrayed him and she doesn't want anything to do with him even though his wife is her best friend. Over time, she learns about the diamond trade and earns enough money to support her family. She takes a vacation to the Grand Cayman Islands where she once again sees and rejects the man most responsible for her husband's death. She goes to the United States where her best friend is working as a prostitute in Chicago.

Ellie Foreman, maker of industrial videos receives one in the mail that shows a woman waiting in a room and two naked men who come in and kill her. Ellie investigates the woman's death which leads to her being in a deserted construction site waiting to die at hands of people who believe she knows too much.

The link between the Russian woman and the videotape is the beginning of a story of greed, corruption and money laundering by prominent citizens (Russians and others). Libby Fisher Hellmann is a fabulous raconteur who writes about people in dire circumstances doing the best they can to survive. AN IMAGE OF DEATH is an entertaining amateur sleuth novel inside a survivor thriller.

Harriet Klausner