Featured books

Featured Websites

.: Reader Views Kids

Provides book reviews, by kids, for kids

.: Inside Scoop Live

Provides live author interviews for podcast

.: Authors Access

Provides interviews with experts in the publishing industry

.: Midwest Book Review

Provides post-publication reviews

.: Reader Views

Provides book reviews and author publicity

.: LR Communication Design

Provides professional website design and development

.: Blogging Authors

Provides a place where writers and readers meet

.: Review The Book

Provides 5 books reviews on 10 different sites

.: Best Sellers World

Provides book reviews and author features

.: Feathered Quill Book Reviews

Provides book reviews and author features

reviews

Doubleback

Libby Fischer Hellman
Bleak House Books (2009)
ISBN 9781606480526
Reviewed by Enid Grabiner for RebeccasReads (08/09)

Video producer Ellie Foreman is back in the investigation game when enlisted to find eight year old Molly Messenger, kidnapped for no apparent reason.  She recruits her friend, private investigator Georgia Davis, to facilitate the child’s return.  Strangely enough three days later, she is returned unharmed without explanation.  Despite the strange circumstances of the incident, mother Chris is relieved and happy.   That is short-lived as is Chris dies in an auto accident.  Her brakes are cut!!

So when Molly’s father hires Georgia to further investigate his ex-wife’s murder, she finds that Chris, an IT director of a bank, was secretly manipulating funds, but why?  Her search for the missing money seems to be key to solving the crime.  It leads her to probe into other “accidents” and draws her into a plot involving illegal immigrants, drug and arms smuggling. She soon finds herself a long way from the comforts of the North Shore of Chicago as her search leads her to a small border town in Arizona where the “Wild West” still exists.

 I am particularly fond of Ellie Foreman as I live in the same area in which she lives and works. I can so easily identify with her life, with the exception, of course, of her fondness for probing. It increases my reading pleasure to be to visualize so clearly all of her settings, but it is not necessary for the reader to have that advantage to enjoy “Doubleback” as a mystery.

Georgia Davis is becoming more central a character than Ellie which disturbs me as I am very connected to Ellie having read previous novels in the series.  Although Ellie is written in first person narrator, she becomes disappointingly less important in this mystery.  Hellman’s characters are well-developed and likeable, but in this particular novel she fails to include important details of past character history established in earlier novels which might enhance the reader’s experience. 

.
.: Blog