Hellmann's first crime fiction novel,
An Eye For Murder, was published in hardcover in 2002 by
Poisoned Pen Press and in paperback by
Berkley Prime Crime. It was nominated for an
Anthony for Best First, and won the Best First Readers Choice Award at Chicago's Love is Murder conference. Its protagonist, video producer and single mother Ellie Foreman, was featured in three additional novels. Her second crime fiction series, featuring Private Investigator Georgia Davis, debuted in 2008 with
Easy Innocence. Davis had been introduced in the 2004 Ellie Foreman novel
An Image of Death, and Hellman said she knew immediately that she would want to write a book with Davis as protagonist. Her next book,
Doubleback (October 2009,
Bleak House Books), features both Davis and Foreman as co-protagonists.
ToxiCity, a prequel to the Georgia Davis series, was published in 2011. A fourth thriller, ''Nobody's Child'' was released in 2014. In 2012,
Easy Innocence was translated into Spanish and published under the title
Inocencia Fácil. In 2010 she released
Set the Night on Fire, published by Allium Press, a stand-alone thriller that goes back, in part, to the late 1960s in Chicago. A second stand-alone,
A Bitter Veil, set largely in Revolutionary Iran, was published by Allium Press in 2012. Hellmann published "Havana Lost" in 2013. Although these three books are each stand-alone thrillers, they all deal with revolution and how it affects individuals, communities, cultures, and countries. Hellmann calls the three her "Revolution Trilogy." Hellmann has published nearly 20 short stories, most of which are available in a collection called
Nice Girl Does Noir. In 2013, this collection was translated into Italian and published under the title
Ragazza Insospettabile Scrive Noir. In 2007 Hellmann edited
Chicago Blues, a short story anthology featuring over 20 prominent Chicago crime fiction authors including
Stuart Kaminsky,
Sara Paretsky, Barbara D'Amato, Sean Chercover,
Marcus Sakey,
J. A. Konrath,
Max Allan Collins, and others. In 2006 Hellmann founded The Outfit Collective, a blog that was shared by eleven Chicago crime fiction authors. According to Blog Rank, it was the #7 mystery novels blog on the Web. ==Awards and honors==