Created by Libby Fischer Hellmann
You don’t need a weatherman to see which way this new Windy City eye blows.
Flawed and occasionally prickly Chicago cop GEORGIA DAVIS was a memorable supporting character in Hellmann’s Ellie Foreman amateur sleuth series, but she really comes into her own as a private eye (and Hellman ups the ante considerably) in 2008’s Easy Innocence, investigating the baseball bat murder of a popular student attending a snooty preppy high school on Chicago’s North Shore. A local sex offender who’s not quite all there stands accused, and it looks like a slam-dunk, until the suspect’s protective sister asks Davis to investigate.
Then all hell breaks loose. Fortunately, Davis’s savvy blend of compassion and gritted-teeth sense of justice is more than up to the task — and boded well for a sequel or two. And Hellman has delivered.
Since her auspicious debut, Georgia has returned several times, first in Doubleback (2009), where she teams up with Ellie to solve a bizarre case involving a kidnapped child, illegal immigrants, drugs, and an independent security firm and several million dollars that may — or may not have gone missing, and then in ToxiCity (2011), a sort of prequel that follows Georgia when she was still a cop. She’s since appeared in Nobody’s Child (2014) and, in 2018, her most political, ripped-from-the-headlines book yet, High Crimes, which finds the generally nonpolitical Georgia tangling with domestic terrorism, assassination, the FBI and the policies of the “most unpopular president ever.”
“After the 2016 election,” Hellman explained in a Publishers Weekly piece, “I went through a period of rage that lasted for a year.”
Besides the Ellie Forman series, she’s also served as the editor of Chicago Blues, a 2007 crime anthology.
UNDER OATH
- “This is good stuff, very good stuff–a tough and tender book that will long be remembered by me”
— Stuart Kaminsky - “The writing is assured…authentic, and the understanding of relationships among cops, lawyers and prosecutors come to life with great urgency.”
— Sara Paretsky - “… the P.I. novel for our moment, not just because of its backdrop of political tension, but because of the resilient strength of its characters. Georgia Davis is a terrific lead, and Libby Fischer Hellmann calls on her own journalism background to add layers of realism to this all-too plausible plot.”
— Michael Koryta on High Crimes - “… for readers who watch the nightly news with dismay, (High Crimes) offers a satisfying alternate reality.”
— Publishers Weekly
NOVELS
- Easy Innocence (2008) | Buy this book | KIndle it!
- Doubleback (2009) | Buy this book | KIndle it!
- ToxiCity (2011) | Buy this book | KIndle it!
- Nobody’s Child (2014) | Buy this book | KIndle it!
- High Crimes (2019) | Buy this book | Buy the audio | Kindle it!
- DoubleBlind (2022) | Buy this book | Buy the audio | Kindle it!
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
