Review: ‘Set the Night on Fire’ by Libby Fischer Hellmann

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

Libby Fischer Hellmann’s new novel probably is titled Set the Night on Fire not only to attract Doors fans but also because Sins of the Father has been overused.

The bodies start piling up from the opening pages of Hellmann’s seventh novel overall, and first that doesn’t involve Georgia Davis or Ellie Foreman. Someone is out to bury the past, apparently orchestrating the murders of three 1960s activists, with the son of one victim as collateral damage. The plot quickly focuses on Lila, the young woman whose father and twin brother were killed in a house fire. This whip-smart, determined survivor isn’t sure how the “accidental” fire started, and her suspicions mount when someone seems hellbent on her destruction.

Then Hellmann, a North Shore-based crime-fiction writer who clearly has gone to school on — or experienced firsthand — radical Chicago politics during the Vietnam era, abruptly shifts gears with a 134-page flashback to the turbulent ’60s.

Six self-styled revolutionaries, most of whom met at the University of Michigan, inhabit a loft in the Old Town neighborhood. There they smoke pot, listen to “underground” radio and avoid adulthood as they fine-tune their plans for ending the war and overthrowing the capitalist pigs.

By the time the six friends predictably crash and burn, you’re wondering if poor Lila and Dar, her knight in Salvation Army armor who was one of the Old Town six, are still above ground. And yes, they reemerge to be relentlessly chased, pummeled and terrified.

Hellmann, who teased readers with a bus full of suspects in her previous novel, Doubleback, narrows the list considerably this time. But things become obvious to the reader long before the otherwise intelligent heroes get a clue.

Hellmann is cruel to the horribly misguided ’60s idealists, but the greedy, power-mad strivers of present day fare even worse. The best a reader can expect is that a ray of hope will sugarcoat the gloom of wasted lives. Meanwhile, the tension will keep you turning the pages.

Jeff Johnson

Sun-Times