Blood Shot (1988)

"I felt a little prickling along the base of my neck, that primitive adrenaline jolt that lets you know you're getting close to the saber-toothed tiger"

Sara Paretsky's veteran private investigator, V. I. Warshawski, is summoned to her childhood suburbs in this family/industrial mystery, in which the kid next door wants Vic to find her father. Vic stumbles onto a industrial negligence cover-up, and as usual, is shortly on the trial of the bad guys...

As usual, there is a decent sized cast as Vic battles with the police, her client, a geriatric doctor and his battleaxe sister - Cleo is my favourite character in the whole book, I think - and a swathe of villains. Vic's downstairs neighbour makes plenty of overprotective appearances, as always, and her friends Lotty and Max come back too. I can't say there's masses of character development of Vic herself, but Caroline is quite a riddle and it's good to see her evolve; ditto the mayor's son Art.

I didn't see any of the plot thread resolutions coming, so that's a big commendation. The various threads all tie up neatly, but it was good to see the different threads (Caroline's paternity, the murder of a key character, the historical industrial relations issue, and the doctor's past) being attended to in reasonably equal measures.

The writing is of a better quality than I had remembered Paretsky's to be - she uses words like submoronic, pilfering, "exuberant philathropy" - it's not Pulitzer-winning but it's a pleasant surprise to see a crime writer stretch their vocabulary every now and again. The book was very easy to pick up again, despite the multiple plot threads.

One for Eighties nostalgics and private investigator fiction fans. ( )

I used to listen to dramatisations on the radio of these books, but I could never quite remember if I had actually read any of them. When I sat down to read this I had no particular expectations. The plot moved along at uneven pace - sometimes very fast, sometimes very slow. This story involves Warshawski's family and neighbours, but also the wider city and issues over industrial pollution, safety and employment rights. It's a reasonably interesting plot, with a varied bunch of characters; some seemed more nuanced than others. Occasionally Warshawski and Caroline grated on my ears and their arguments started to annoy, but then I just put the book down and came back to it later. I don't usually reckon to read every book featuring a particular detective, and in order, so hopefully I will be less likely to notice any repetition from book to book. ( )

"You can't heal the world, Liebchen. I know you know that. You can only work with one person at a time, in a very small way. And over the individuals you help you have much effect. It's only the megalomaniacs, the Hitlers and their ilk, who think they have the answer for everyone's life. You are in the world of the sane, Victoria, the world of the limited". Lotty Herschel to Vic.

VI helps an old family friend find her father and gets involved with a crooked company. ( )

I picked up this Bookcrossing book in a cafe because I thought that it might be time to give Sara Paretsky another chance. I had given up reading her novels about VI Warshawski when I tired of her endless criminal investigations of her extended family. Ironically, this novel is the UK edition of the first novel with which I had a problem when it appeared as Blood Shot. I did not recognise it under its UK title until I started to read it. Almost twenty years ago, I was more disappointed with the absurdity of the solution to the mystery than I was with the largely uncommercial basis of Warshawski's business because this one is about helping a childhood friend rather than one of her inumerable cousins. I remembered the book when the basketball game starts late in the first chapter. That is not very far in. All the chapters are short. That is part of Paretsky's style. As is the use of frequent recaps as if she does not really trust her readers to pay attention. Despite this, the books all have pace. None of this is enough, however. The plots become formulaic and the characters do not develop. And by this fifth book I was no longer getting pleasure from the Chicago locations. If I want repetitive formulaic detective novels in a familiar city, I need look no further than the witty staccato conversations of Robert B Parker's Spenser novels. ( )