Libby Fischer Hellmann


Libby Fischer Hellmann is an American crime fiction writer who currently resides in Chicago, Illinois. Most of her novels and stories are set in Chicago; the Chicago Sun-Times notes that she "grew up in Washington, D.C., but she has embraced her adopted home of Chicago with the passion of a convert."

Early years

Raised in Washington D.C., Hellmann attended the National Cathedral School, followed by the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating with a BA in History, she enrolled in New York University's Graduate Program in Film and Television, earning an MFA in 1972.
She worked in television news as an assistant film editor for NBC in New York City, then relocated to D.C. where she joined National Public Affairs Center for Television, the public affairs unit that first paired Robert MacNeil with Jim Lehrer. Among other programs, she worked on the rebroadcast of the Watergate hearings in 1973. Hellmann also spent time at TVN, the news syndication service underwritten by Joseph Coors, and NBC in Washington, DC. In 1978 she joined Burson-Marsteller's Chicago creative department where she worked until 1985. She founded Fischer Hellmann Communications in 1985, which specializes in video production, speech writing, and spokesperson training.

Career in fiction

Hellmann's first crime fiction novel, An Eye For Murder, was published in hardcover in 2002 by Poisoned Pen Press and in paperback by Berkley Prime Crime. It was nominated for an Anthony for Best First, and won the Best First Readers Choice Award at Chicago's Love is Murder conference. Its protagonist, video producer and single mother Ellie Foreman, was featured in three additional novels.
Her second crime fiction series, featuring Private Investigator Georgia Davis, debuted in 2008 with Easy Innocence. Davis had been introduced in the 2004 Ellie Foreman novel An Image of Death, and Hellman said she knew immediately that she would want to write a book with Davis as protagonist. Her next book, Doubleback, features both Davis and Foreman as co-protagonists. ToxiCity, a prequel to the Georgia Davis series, was published in 2011. A fourth thriller, Nobody's Child, was released in 2014.
In 2012, Easy Innocence was translated into Spanish and published under the title Inocencia Fácil.
In 2010 she released Set the Night on Fire, published by , a stand-alone thriller that goes back, in part, to the late 1960s in Chicago. A second stand-alone, A Bitter Veil, set largely in Revolutionary Iran, was published by in 2012. Hellmann published "Havana Lost" in 2013. Although these three books are each stand-alone thrillers, they all deal with revolution and how it affects individuals, communities, cultures, and countries. Hellmann calls the three her "Revolution Trilogy."
Hellmann has published nearly 20 short stories, most of which are available in a collection called Nice Girl Does Noir. In 2013, this collection was translated into Italian and published under the title Ragazza Insospettabile Scrive Noir.
In 2007 Hellmann edited Chicago Blues, a short story anthology featuring over 20 prominent Chicago crime fiction authors including Stuart Kaminsky, Sara Paretsky, Barbara D'Amato, Sean Chercover, Marcus Sakey, Joe Konrath, Max Allan Collins, and others.
In 2006 Hellmann founded , a blog that was shared by eleven Chicago crime fiction authors. According to Blog Rank, it was the #7 mystery novels blog on the Web.

Awards and honors

Hellmann has been nominated for several major mystery awards, including the Shamus Award, the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense, the Anthony Award and the Agatha. She has won the Readers Choice/Lovey Award multiple times. Three of her novels have also been finalists in the Thriller of the Year/Foreword Reviews Magazine awards. Her short story "Letters from Havana" won Honorable Mention in the Saturday Evening Post Short Story contest for 2014.