Sara Paretsky

I've read almost everything Sara Paretsky has published. This may be the best one yet. It's almost 400 pages but a very quick read. As usual V.I. saves the world with only grudging assistance from various police forces. In this one ICE is a constant problem rather than anything else. The book was written during the days of Donald Trump and while that is barely mentioned it can't be ignored. Immigrants, in this case mainly from Syria, are in constant fear of deportation and avoiding terror in show more their homeland. I read this just a week after Assad's regime fell and the terror these people have fled from is more front of mind than ever before.

The usual characters are here, Dr. Herschel, Mr. Contreras. Murray, The Streeter brothers, her ex-husband, Dick, and, of course, the dogs, Mitch and Peppy. The usual sites are here, Chicago in general, Beth Israel hospital, The University of Chicago, IIT, Lake Michigan, the L.. the expressways, the suburbs. The bad guys are the Russian mob, Russian goons, the Syrian dictator, billionaires, pay day lenders, lawyers avoiding their responsibilities, antiquity looters, corporations taking advantage of undocumented immigrants and men taking advantage of defenseless young girls. This time Victoria is fighting for relatives. Lotty's grand nephew is a student from Montreal studying engineering at IIT. Nieces of her ex-husband, and thus Victoria, are missing and possibly dead.

Paretsky manages to weave two seemingly unrelented stories into a tangled web of a bad guy with his goons and hangers on willing to look the other way and the good guys they victimize in different ways.

V.I. is also getting older and often in need to time out to rejuvenate. She gets beaten up badly more often than in most of these stories. Paretsky pulls at our empathetic impulses with two young girls who survived a drug addicted mother willing to subject her daughters to the worst possible abuse and neglect. Add to this stolen artifacts, the Oriental Institute at The University of Chicago and young engineers at IIT wanting to serve humanity and we have a mystery with multiple threads. It's worth your time. show less

1982 was a stellar year in crime fiction. In that year Sue Grafton, with "A is for Alibi" and Sara Paretsky, with "Indemnity Only", initiated detective fiction series featuring women PIs that have extended for more than 20 volumes each. Grafton passed away in 2017 before completing her alphabet-based series featuring Kinsey Millhone, but thankfully for us, Paretsky continues to produce first-rate V.I. Warshawski novels.

Unlike Millhone, who stayed firmly rooted in the 1980's, V.I. Warshawski show more has moved forward with the times, and in deference to aging, takes longer to recover from her strenuous encounters with the bad guys. But her ethical core remains as strong as it was 40 years ago, and is the driving force behind the action in every book.

[b:Critical Mass|17707673|Critical Mass (V.I. Warshawski, #16)|Sara Paretsky|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1366555352l/17707673._SY75_.jpg|24757203] was published in 2013 and is one of the more memorable entries in the series. As is typical for a Warshawski novel, multiple plot lines link together the past and the present. In this case, the past is research into atomic power in Austria just before and during WWII, and the present is drug addiction in the Midwest. What links them in Vic's friend Lotty Herschel, who escaped Vienna as a child and is now a Chicago physician.

Also typical for these novels is a complex plot that revolves in part around some esoteric topic, this time developments in physics in the 1930s and 1940s. The vagaries of human nature also factor in, and it is up to Vic to sort it all out, while keeping herself and her loved ones alive.

So glad that I have a backlog of Warshawski novels to read. Where the Kinsey Millhone stories became somewhat tired over time, there seems to be no end to the topics that interest Paretsky and her ability to turn those interests into excellent fiction. show less

Having followed the V. I. Warshawski stories for two decades, I looked forward to another visit with my Chicago "friend." Paretsky always shows me something about Chicago (and sometimes about life) that I didn't know, and BODY WORK is no exception. The complex plot provokes thought about Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome in Iraq war veterans, violence against family, different family dynamics in different sub-cultures, homophobia, and performance art. Despite this ambitious scope, the mystery show more plot was tight, well-told, and unfolded in a way that allowed the reader to make guesses, test them against the facts, and learn along with Vic. The denouement tied up all loose ends neatly.
However, there are a few things about this book that are a bit "off." As Vic storms into and through middle-age, she doesn't seem to have progressed, learned, matured in all the ways you might expect from her fast-paced, intense work and personal life. She hasn't changed and adapted as I would have expected. And there's that annoying little niece Petra, who serves no purpose in the stories except to annoy the reader.
Still a great read! show less

Another excellent addition to the V.I. Warshawski canon. This series started the same year I was born, but it still manages to seem fresh and up to date with each new book, and V.I. is still one of the best fictional detectives out there. In addition to the excellent mystery, full of plot twists and interesting clues, this book also addresses modern social issues around media, mental illness, and politics. If you like a little social commentary with your fiction you'll enjoy this book, if show more you prefer to keep your fiction in the realm of fantasy then this probably isn't the book for you. show less