Set the Night on Fire

December 20, 2010
Taking a retro break from the Georgia Davis and Ellie Foreman mystery series, Hellman (Doubleback) delivers a top-rate standalone thriller that taps into the antiwar protests of the 1960s and ‘70s. Darwin "Dar" Gantner, a former MOBE (Mobilization to End the War) leader, has just been released from prison after serving 40 years for the 1970 bombing of Chicago's Kerr's department store that claimed the lives of two security guards and his girlfriend, Alixandra "Alix" Kerr, the daughter of the store's conservative Republican owner, Sebastian Kerr. Before Dar can visit old associate Casey Hilliard, Casey and his son, Danny, die in a suspicious house fire. Danny's twin sister, Lila, begins digging into her father's past, putting herself in jeopardy from someone possibly also responsible for the fatal car accident of one of Dar's other friends from the protest era. A jazzy fusion of past and present, Hellman's insightful, politically charged whodunit explores a fascinating period in American history.