FICTION
Released: Jan. 3, 2012
"Plotted with all Paretsky's customary generosity, this standout entry harnesses her heroine's righteous anger to some richly deserving targets, all linked together in a truly amazing finale."
V.I. Warshawski's 14th case entangles everyone in Chicago from a murdered private eye to a pair of Senate candidates and the world's 21st-richest man.
Read full book review >
FICTION
Released: Sept. 1, 2010
"Paretsky plays out her trademark political and social themes not with rhetoric, but with a compelling story of lives shattered by pride, greed and fear of the unknown."
Chicago investigator V.I. Warshawski (
Hardball, 2009, etc.) struggles to clear an Iraq War vet charged with murder.
Read full book review >
FICTION
Released: Sept. 22, 2009
"A tormented, many-layered tale that seems to have been dug out of Chicago history with a pickax. Readers who persevere through that interminable first-half flashback will be rewarded with the tremendous momentum of the second half."
V.I. Warshawski's 13th case (
Fire Sale, 2005, etc.) drags her back to Chicago's tumultuous summer of 1966.
Read full book review >
FICTION
Released: June 1, 2005
"Warshawski's tense, sharp 11th shows that you really can go home again."
Corruption and deception are never far behind as V.I. Warshawski (
Blacklist, 2003, etc.) goes back to her South Chicago roots.
Read full book review >
FICTION
Released: Oct. 1, 2003
"Paretsky emphasizes the political but doesn't neglect the personal here: a compelling tale of secrets that can't stay buried."
Paretsky exploits post-9/11 paranoia to take up for the little guy once more, as V.I. Warshawski gets her First Amendment rights stomped while fencing with obstructive witnesses and unreliable clients.
Read full book review >
FICTION
Released: Sept. 11, 2001
"No wonder the heroically mounting complications are never quite brought under control: her furious energy keeps the final pages still churning."
When she agrees to help lathe operator Isaiah Sommers press his claim for his recently deceased uncle's piddling $10,000 policy with Ajax Insurance, V.I. Warshawski has no idea that the case will blow up in her face—first with her former lover Ralph Devereux's insistence that Ajax paid out the policy ten years ago when they got proof that Aaron Sommers had died, then with the stunning news that muckraking Alderman Louis Durham has publicly tarred her as an Ajax toady determined to bilk the Sommers family out of their rightful due.
Read full book review >
FICTION
Released: Oct. 12, 1999
"A triumphant return to form for V.I., who's come back from a five-year sabbatical (Tunnel Vision, 1994, etc.) as strong as Vladimir Horowitz."
Driving home one night from a party for Global Studio star Lacey Dowell (the Mad Virgin), V.I. Warshawski nearly runs over a woman dying on an Edgewater street.
Read full book review >
FICTION
Released: June 1, 1998
"Still, Paretsky's ambitious, ambiguously religious novel earns an honorable place in the gallery of straight fiction by mystery writers from P.D. James's Innocent Blood to Walter Mosley's RL's Dream."
The Holy Spirit, or someone very like her, appears on the mean Chicago streets usually watched over by Paretsky's detective V.I. Warshawski (Windy City Blues, 1995, etc.)—and, brother, is she in a state.
Read full book review >
FICTION
Released: Oct. 13, 1995
"Enough here to keep Paretsky's many fans going until their next novel-length fix, then, but nothing likely to win new followers."
FICTION
Released: June 1, 1994
"Strictly overkill for a heroine gone from hard-edged to hard-bitten and a creative writer on a self-indulgent rampage."
Chicago PI V.I. Warshawski (Guardian Angel, 1992, etc.) discovers frail, frightened Tamar Hawkings and her three children living in the rat-infested basement of V.I.'s soonto-be-abandoned office building.
Read full book review >
FICTION
Released: Feb. 5, 1992
"Suspense rarely flags through the slightly excessive length here—densely textured, adroitly plotted, and one of the author's best."
FICTION
Released: May 15, 1987
"Superior stuff."
Another bumpy trip for Chicago's tough, gruff super P.I.-lawyer V.I. Warshawski (Deadlock, etc.).
Read full book review >
