Another great read in the Ellie Foreman Series where once again Ellie is thrown for a loop when she gets a package delivered to her door and she gets involved with a video of an unknown young woman's murder and the police chose not to get involved. One thing that Ellie can not do is not try to help solve the name of the unknown woman. I did not read the first two books of the series, but had no trouble with keeping up! ( )

Although this mystery was outside my usual pickings (50s pulp, gritty
crime, hardboiled detective), I found it to be very well written. It was a
fast paced read and quite enjoyable. Ellie Foreman, a divorced Jewish
mother of a teenager, works as a film editor in Chicago. One evening a
mysterious video is dropped on her doorstep. After viewing it and
believing it to be an authentic murder, Ellie seeks police assistance.
Meanwhile, a second story unfolds as two couples in Soviet Georgia
deal with the corruption and chaos as the Soviet Union falls. Of course,
the two stories intersect, but along the way, Ellie figures out what's
going on. There is a strong backdrop of history, including connections
to the Holocaust and to the fall of the Soviet Union and the havoc that
ensued. A fine piece of writing that is definitely worth your time.
( )

Ellie Foreman receives an unsolicited video by an unknown person at her home. She is an independent producer of industrial videos and thought it may pertain to work. Instead, what she receives is what looks like the murder of a young woman in some basement. Thus begins her desire to find the truth. Meanwhile, in Russia we learn of the lives of two friends, Mika and Arin as the Soviet Union crumbles and their lives change drastically.

How these two stories come together, I found interesting. This is a slow moving mystery and not a fast paced thriller. As the stories development, we get to know what makes Ellis tick and what she deals with on a regular basis. But since is the third installment of the Ellie Foreman mysteries, I found I was lacking in knowing her backstory and why she was so paranoid at the beginning. Other than that, I enjoyed how it all seems to mesh and make for a satisfying story. ( )

The plot drives this story more than the characters do. Hellmann does a great job with the Eastern European aspect of the story, where she touches on human trafficking and forced prostitution. The one problem I had was that Ellie Foreman, the main character, kept referring to some sort of nameless danger she got into in the past that, from what I gathered, had to do with her video editing career and the police. However, that was never clarified. Consequently, the character and aspects of the story felt incomplete. ( )

The only thing I really liked about An Image of Death was that it ended.

While reading this book, I was constantly amazed by how badly written it was. Is this the state of modern mysteries? It seems they're all people writing parallel versions of themselves doing freelance investigation while the local police take turns playing good cop/bad cop. While I have nothing against semi-autobiographical works, it seems that too often these authors rely solely on their thorough knowledge of a subject or a locale, and plot a weak story around it.

Such is the case with Image. Oh, you're a former video producer, Ms. Hellmann? Well, so is your protagonist. Oh, you live in Chi-town, Ms. Hellmann? Well, so does your protagonist. If I were a gambling man, I'd also guess that Ms. Hellmann is Jewish (like her protagonist), and hates it when people spell her last name "h-e-l-l-m-a-n," or just calls her "Libby Hellmann." Maybe she's a single mom with past run-ins with Johnny Law, too! If Ellie isn't Hellmann's "Mary Sue," I don't know who is.

Before I talk about how utterly horrible this book is, I'd like to address one plus side: Hellmann definitely knows Chicago. Of course, when most people know a town that well, they usually become cartographers, which doesn't require any amount of literary merit, just the ability to draw accurate scale lines in the right place.

I read on the cover that her first book was nominated for an Anthony award!? And what's this? A blurb from William Kent Kreuger, multiple Anthony Award winner: "...mysteries don't get any better than this." I'll assume that the ...'s replaced the word 'amateur,' otherwise, I'd not value Mr. Kreuger's integrity enough to even consider reading his work, if he thinks that Hellmann's work is the pinnacle of perfection.

The book itself is about Ellie Foreman (note the similar patterns of the name Ellie and Libby; Foreman and Hellmann) who one day gets a video of a woman being murdered. She then takes it to the police, but has to meddle in the meantime, while she's doing a video editing project for some halfway house project for foster children.

The problems with the book are many, and it just starts with the obvious pseudo-autobiographical nature of the work. It continues with the fact that throughout the book, the protagonist, a video editor, spends very little time actually doing her job. She goes to lunch a lot, visits her Dad a lot, bugs the police a lot, and has random epiphanies a lot. But, not so much on the video editing. And, for a professional video editor, you would think that she'd know not to pause a tape at a critical moment, as, according to one of the other video editor characters in the book, it ruins the integrity. After hearing this once, she goes on and does it with another tape containing vital information a second time, at another crucial scene. Wow!

When Ellie isn't busy damaging evidence, she's making it painfully obvious that she's Jewish (and makes it obvious when other people AREN'T); or she's talking about how she met her boyfriend because her dad had a fling with his mom; or she's fluffing her narrative prose by making comments that make me think she has an Electra complex; or she's having lunch; or she's trash-talking McDonald's or Starbucks; or she's making a comment about some bit of technology that makes her look like a dinosaur Luddite; or she's bumbling around Chicago while the next piece of the puzzle gets shoved (sometimes quite literally) into her hands. And when she's not working, or doing this, we have long, long passages of exposition, or unnecessary Rod & Don dialogues (also known as: "As you know, Bob...") which exist solely for the benefit of the less-than-sharp reader. The book also shows off how much Hebrew, German, and Russian the author knows, by giving you an italic word, and then defining it. Like, how the protagonist's father uses a Hebrew word with his Jewish daughter, and then translates it to English for her. "Gee, thanks, Dad! You've been using that word all my life, and just now do I find out what it means!"

And so I won't spoil the ending for you, let me just tell you: it's weak.

I know why Hellmann wrote her books from a first-person perspective: so she could blame all the flaws in the prose on Foreman. "That's just the way Ellie thinks," I could hear her say. "She just starts free-associating, and then she finds what she's looking for." And, sure, I'll admit, characters can think like that, but authors are the ones who create them, and chronicle their tales. Is it too much to ask for more quality prose, less exposition, less dialogue for the sake the audience, and more believability in Ellie's voice?

So, if you want a poorly written pseudo-mystery that won't challenge your intellect in any way, shape or form, then by all means, go ahead and read An Image of Death. And while you're at it, read the other of the four Ellie Foreman books, and the two Georgia Davis books. I'll personally wait for Hellmann to write a decent mystery in which the protagonist is more Sherlock than Shylock.

In the meantime, I think I'd rather just spend my time perusing the Rand McNally street map for Chicago. ( )