Being a private investigator in 1979 Chicago is not considered “women’s work”. But V. I. Warshawski, the daughter of a Polish policeman and an Italian mother, can hold her own in this male dominated world. She agrees to help John Thayer find his son Peter’s girlfriend, and fellow student, Anita Hill. If Anita can’t be found, Peter has determined to drop out of the University of Chicago, forgo business school, and become a union organizer. Vic is hired to keep Peter headed to a corporate future. However, she quickly learns there is no student named Anita Hill. Then, she finds Peter Thayer’s dead body. Next, she discovers her client isn’t John Thayer. As she searches for the missing girl, Vic discovers a plot involving a dirty insurance company, a mob connected union, and a corrupt bank twisted around the story of a star-crossed Romeo and Juliet couple. Throughout, Paretsky's writing strongly invokes the Chicago streets. Hardball, the thirteenth Warshawski novel, was released in 2009.

Meeting an anonymous client late on a sizzling summer night is asking for trouble. But trouble is Chicago private eye V.I. Warshawski's specialty. Her client says he's the prominent banker, John Thayer. Turns out he's not. He says his son's girlfriend, Anita Hill, is missing. Turns out that's not her real name. V.I.'s search turns up someone soon enough -- the real John Thayer's son, and he's very, very dead. So, just who is this client, anyway? Why is he setting her up and sending her on a wild goose chase? By the time V.I. begins to figure it out, things are getting hotter that Chicago in July. It's a race against time, and there are not one but two young girls' lives at stake.

I'm very, very late coming to this series. I've heard about it off and on for years, and I recall seeing a movie that starred Kathleen Turner as V.I. Warshawski way back in the 90s. This book was written in the late 1970s and it is very dated, but the action was hard core and fast paced. It tries to be as gritty as the "film noir" detective stories from the 1950s, and doesn't quite make it. The plot was extremely shallow and easy to see through. There were no surprises at all in this book. I'll probably not try to track down any more in this series. Like Hollywood obviously thought, once is quite enough of V.I. Warshawski. ( )

I like being in the world of the private detective, and V. I. is fun to read about. A little bit of narrative roughness and uncertainty. I liked the ending. ( )

This is the first mystery in the V.I. Warshawski series. Vic is a female detective in a man’s world. She is hired by a man pretending to be someone else and is asked to find a young woman. The investigation takes many twists and turns, placing Vic and her friends in danger. Vic is a strong and resourceful woman. I enjoyed this book—it was fairly fast paced. Written in the first person narrative, this book takes the reader into the thoughts and musings of the main character. As the mystery was unwoven, I was able to see the thought processes of Vic. The final stand off where Vic revealed the crime seemed anticlimactic, however, because the character had been over it so many times—spelling out the crime at least twice before facing off with the bad guys. I will definitely give this series a try though as it appears to hold promise. ( )

I find Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski Series very readable. The first Indemnity Only makes it clear that this is an homage to Film Noir and hardboiled detectives with V.I. Warshawski meeting her client in a darkened office (the fuses have blown)Lite only by the neon of a nearby bar.

In her subesquent adventures V I is beaten up. shoot at and refuses to given in with a tenacity Marlow would admire. I like the slow march of technology through the series in the first book she has a manual typewriter. by the last she conducts internet searchs and has a mobile phone.
Throughout she grows even more cynical as she battles against a sea of corruption, causing it seems only minor ripples . ( )