The first novel in crime writer Libby Fischer Hellmann's popular Ellie Foreman mystery series, An Eye for Murder introduces the documentary filmmaker, single mom, and amateur sleuth in a tale that opens in Nazi-era Prague and closes on the North Shore of present-day Chicago.
An elderly stranger, Ben Sinclair, watches Ellie's "Celebrate Chicago" cable television show and dies suddenly not long after. Ellie receives a letter from Ben's landlady, who found Ellie's name among Ben's possessions. Agreeing to help dispose of his effects, but not knowing of any connection, Ellie begins to piece together Ben's story from the books and wartime relics he's left behind.
Ellie's search for clues takes her on a dangerous trail from the political present of the North Shore to memories of the city's ethnic neighborhoods and steel mills, an illicit love affair, Nazi-era intrigue, and more than one murder.
An Eye for Murder (published in 2002) is the first in six Ellie Foreman mystery thrillers from Libby Fischer Hellmann.