Heard: "Double Back" by Libby Fischer Hellmann

Heard: Double Back by Libby Fischer Hellmann, 2012 off the Overdrive.com date. I do not know if that is the original pub date.

I really, really disliked the narration for this novel. The narrator did not do a good job.

Chicago based investigator Georgia Davis is pals with independent film producer Ellie Foreman. A friend of Foreman ask's Foreman's help with the friend's neighbor. The neighbor, Chris Messenger, has had her only daughter, 8-year-old Molly, kidnapped. Ellie knows there is nothing she can do to help and urges Messenger to call the police. Messenger absolutely refuses to contact the police and Foreman calls Davis to help out.

Davis and Foreman do team together to help out and Davis does call the police. Well, once the cops are involved then Davis and Foreman are out. A few days later the news reports that Molly has been freed. A few days after that the news reports that Messenger herself has died in a car wreck. Foreman reads the article and realizes this is a big deal because Messenger's boss died in a similar accident shortly before the kidnapping.

Things happen. Davis is hired by Messenger's ex-husband who is worried for Molly's safety. Davis digs and discovers another colleague of Messenger has gone missing. Davis tracks Missing IT Woman to a remote Wisconsin cabin. Davis and M.I.W. escape a killer at the cabin and flee to Lake Geneva where Foreman's boyfriend lives. M.I.W. shares information that the bank M.I.W. and Messenger worked for has a real important client and a couple other weird things have happened.

Davis and Foreman investigate more. Davis is injured and then travels to Arizona. More excitement in AZ. Everything is solved in the end.

Not a lot of interaction between Davis and Foreman. They meet a few times but mostly work alone. Both are interesting characters and quite different people. Foreman is divorced with a 17-year-old daughter, a rich boyfriend, and a video production job. Davis is single with no family, sleeps in a spartan apartment, and used to be a police officer. They get along okay though and Davis never expected to be friends with Foreman.

Davis's trip to a border town in AZ was the best part about the novel. Davis tracks the killings to a security contractor that works internationally and in the US. She gets involved with right-wing border watchers, illegal immigrants who are preyed on by the crooks in the US and MX, and drug smuggling in tunnels.

Comments:
1. A nice enough novel to make me tolerate the awful narration.
2. The second Hellmann novel I have read.
3. Hellmann was nice to me on the two occasions I spoke to her.
4. Dang, that ALA convention was seven years ago.