Libby Fischer Hellman has published thirteen novels and twenty short stories including suspense mysteries, historicals, PI novels, amateur sleuth tales, police procedurals, and even a cozy mystery. Her first novel, An Eye for Murder, which features Ellie Foreman, a video producer and single mother, was released in 2002 and nominated for several awards. Publishers Weekly called it a "masterful blend of politics, history, and suspense." In 2008 Libby introduced her second series featuring hard-boiled Chicago PI Georgia Davis, with the latest book in that installment just released, 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 ultimately responsible for the assassination of Resistance leader Dena Baldwin at a demonstration fourteen months after the 2016 election. The gunman, on a hotel rooftop near Grant Park, 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 have infiltrated the group. She finds others who will do whatever it takes—including murder—to shield right-wing, wealthy elites. When Georgia begins piecing together the facts, relatives of both victims mysteriously disappear, and the danger escalates. Threats and bruises have never frightened Georgia, but she’s side-swiped by the sudden reappearance of the mother who abandoned her when she was a child. Can she survive an emotional family crisis at the same time she pursues killers whose only goal is to protect themselves?
Libby stops by In Reference to Murder to talk briefly about writing the book and offers up an excerpt:
RESEARCH FOR HIGH CRIMES
The short answer is that I didn’t do much research for this book. The daily news cycle provided most of what I needed. Even before the election, I started following a few people on Twitter with contacts in the IC (Intelligence Community). Through piecing together what they were and were not reporting, I was able to construct an overview of what has become the most corrupt, incompetent administration in American history. I also joined a Facebook group (featured in the novel itself) that provides a daily compendium of news stories and articles that deepened my knowledge. And I followed blogs like Amy Siskind’s Weekly List of creeping authoritarianism and the death of democracy. Fun stuff, right?
Having said all that, however, there were a couple of situations for which I needed help. I talked to an ethical hacker to construct how to send an anonymous email that couldn’t be traced, and I also talked to a scientist who told me how to set up the explosion that kills the killer.
BOOK EXCERPT
Georgia rose. “Erica?”
The woman nodded. Her black hair, threaded with gray, was pulled back into a messy ponytail. She wore jeans, a wool jacket, and snow boots despite the absence of snow. Her neck was long and graceful, but her tight expression made her otherwise smooth features look sharp and out of place, as if they were surprised to find themselves arranged on her face. She was pale and thin, on the way toward emaciated. Grief, likely.
“I’m Georgia Davis.”
The woman, probably in her fifties, gave her a slight nod and gestured to the younger man beside her. “This is my son, Jeffrey. Dena’s brother.”
That Dena had a brother was news to Georgia. It hadn’t been mentioned in the media. Jeffrey was several inches taller than his mother, but just as slim. Somewhere in his thirties. He shared his mother’s dark eyes and hair, minus the gray. His face held a somber, soulful expression.
“He’s as devastated as I am. We both want to get to the bottom of this.”
Get to the bottom of what? Three people had died, including Dena. A dozen more wounded. The shooter had been found—dead from an IED explosion on the roof of a hotel directly across from Grant Park. An open-and-shut case, or so officialdom proclaimed. Domestic terrorism. Tick off yet another massacre to add to the legacy of American gun violence.
Georgia reined in her impatience. “Would you like some coffee? It’s on me.”
“I—uh—tea would be nice.”
A few minutes later, with cappuccino and a pastry for Georgia, the same for Jeffrey, and tea for Erica, they settled into chairs. Jeffrey cleared his throat. Erica sipped her tea. She looked dazed, almost lost. She was clearly struggling. An unusual tug of protectiveness came over Georgia. She gentled her voice as she prompted Erica.
“You said, ‘get to the bottom of this.’ What do you mean?”
Erica’s chest rose and fell. She took another sip of tea. “I assume you’re up to speed on the events of—of Dena’s death.”
Georgia nodded. It was still the top story everywhere. A year had passed since the election of the most unpopular president ever, and despite a core base of supporters, millions were demanding he be removed from office. The president and his administration were incompetent, corrupt, and dangerous. The rumors were that Chicago bookies wouldn’t take any more bets about his odds for survival. A special counsel was investigating.
Erica played with her spoon. “So let me tell you about Dena. She is—was—a left-wing progressive, and she supported Bernie until the convention. Afterwards, she switched to Hillary. She volunteered, rang doorbells in Wisconsin, made phone calls. She organized a rally in Evanston and even put together a carpool to drive seniors to the polls.” She shifted. “The morning after the results were in, she refused to believe them. Later that day she created a Facebook group, ResistanceUSA.”
“Wait. Are you saying she founded the group?”
A wan smile came across Erica’s face. “That’s right. She believed that the vote, particularly in the midwest swing states, had been manipulated by Russia. She wasn’t alone: others were—and still are—alleging it too. The group exploded, and by the end of the year, there were nearly forty-two thousand members.”
“Forty-two thousand people in seven weeks?”
Erica nodded. “Her energy never flagged. Within six months, she was a national figure. She was one of the first to call out every misstep by the new administration, every injustice, every example of creeping authoritarianism, every risk to our democracy. She was in the middle of expanding her ‘repertoire’ when she—died. She had begun to speak out about other issues. The dangers of fracking, the criminality of the new administration, the mess he’s made with our foreign allies. She’d really come into her own. It’s as if she was born to do this. Of course, in the process she made enemies.”
“Such as?”
“There were the bots—you know—know—automated tweets and Facebook messages that roll out whenever a specific subject is raised. Anyway, hundreds, maybe thousands of bots trolled her online.” Erica let out a world-weary breath. “Then there were the real trolls. Human crazies, I call them.”
Georgia nodded. Like mutant viruses, they had invaded the Internet to sow discord and chaos wherever possible.
“They accused her of lying, of propaganda, of being a traitor to the country. Some people even accused her of being a Russian spy working undercover.”
“Although how they could, given the administration’s complicity with Russia, is nuts,” Jeffrey cut in.
Erica nodded in acknowledgment. “Still, Dena was in her element. She thrived on allies and adversaries alike. When she wasn’t appearing on TV, she was organizing, bringing new converts to the group.”
Georgia’s eyebrows went up at the word “converts.” Erica caught it. “Yes, it may have started as a cult, but it grew so big so fast that it became a movement. Dena is—was very persuasive.” Her smile held a mix of pride and sorrow.
“So, last fall she and her crew decided to organize a grass-roots demonstration. They used the Facebook group to spread the She called for a million people to come out. Privately, she hoped there would be at least a thousand.”
“For what reason?”
“January marked a year since the inauguration, but in that short time so much of our country and policies are now unrecognizable. She wanted people to use their First Amendment rights to let the traitor know that what he’s doing and what he represents are not okay.”
“She succeeded,” Georgia said.
Another sad smile curled Erica’s lips. “It was amazing! Police estimated over two hundred thousand people came to Grant Park.” Her smile faded.
Georgia understood. There was no need to repeat the rest. A sharpshooter with a .223 Bushmaster rifle equipped with a bump stock had opened up, killing Dena, group member DJ Grabiner, and a protestor in the front row. Her second-in-command, Ruth Marriotti, along with a dozen others, had been wounded. Chicago cops tracked the gunman to the roof of the White Star Hotel twenty-two minutes later, where they discovered he’d blown himself up with what they later learned was a pipe bomb. Why he hadn’t used the Bushmaster to off himself was still unknown.
The shooter, Scott Allen Jarvis, had materialized seemingly out of nowhere. He was raised on an Iowa farm, but the family was forced to sell when Jarvis was seventeen. He moved to Iowa City for college but never graduated. His parents died in a house fire soon after he left home, leaving only Jarvis and his younger sister, Katherine. He enlisted in the army and survived two tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq. Afterward he resurfaced in Rogers Park, a neighborhood on Chicago’s North Side, where he lived with his sister and was unemployed much of the time.
Law enforcement and the media scoured his history in the hope of tying him to some kind of radical terrorist group but didn’t find anything. It was as if the guy dropped in from another planet. That didn’t deter cable news, of course, hungry for any scrap of information, meaningful or not. They replayed the video of the shooting and the simple service that passed for Jarvis’s funeral so often that Georgia had to turn the TV off. She could only guess how it affected Erica.
Now Erica’s eyes filled. She swiped at them with her napkin.
Georgia squeezed Erica’s hand. Jeffrey Baldwin cleared his throat. Georgia glanced over. He looked like he was struggling to control his emotions.
Erica swallowed, then picked up her teaspoon, stirred her tea, replaced the spoon on the saucer. Finally, she looked up, and Georgia asked, “Why do you think your daughter was targeted for murder?”
Excerpted from HIGH CRIMES © Copyright 2018 by Libby Fischer Hellmann. Reprinted with permission of the author. All rights reserved.
You can read more about Libby and High Crimes via her website and follow Libby on Facebook and Twitter.
