Sara Paretsky

For V.I., the journey begins with a national conference in downtown Chicago, where angry protesters are calling for the recovery of Holocaust assets. Replayed on the evening news is the scene of a slight man who has stood up at the conference to tell an astonishing story of a childhood shattered by the Holocaust -- a story that has devastating consequences for V.I.'s cherished friend and mentor, Lotty Herschel. Lotty was a girl of nine when she emigrated...

V. I. Warshawski isn't crazy about going back to her old south Chicago neighborhood, but a promise is something she always keeps. Caroline, a childhood friend, has a dying mother and a problem--after twenty-five years she wants V.I. to find the father she never knew. But when V.I. starts probing into the past, she stumbles onto some long-buried secrets--and a very new corpse. Now she's stirring up a deadly mix of big business and chemical corruption...

“V.I. Warshawski is one of the best . . . smart, tough, sexy.”—Daily News (New York)
“Sara Paretsky makes excellent use of local backgrounds in a carefully plotted tale of murder and great misdeeds in the world of Great Lakes cargo shipping.”—Chicago Tribune
When Chicago Black Hawks hockey legend Boom Boom Warshawski slips off a wharf and drowns in Lake Michigan, his private-eye...

“The best of the Warshawski novels!”—Los Angeles Times Book Review
 
Underneath V. I. Warshawski’s wisecracking P.I. exterior lies a real pushover. When elderly neighbor Mr. Contreras asks her to look into a fellow union retiree’s sudden disappearance, she says “yes” from her heart, not her head. And when a crotchety eighty-year-old dog owner starts wrangling with a Yuppie-Come-Lately...

A conscience can weigh a PI down more than the heaviest firearm--and get her into more trouble. It's that nagging conscience that makes V. I. Warshawski agree to fill in as coach for the girls' basketball team at her South Chicago alma mater--which in turn leads her to the headquarters of By-Smart, the global retail empire where V. I. hopes to get some desperately needed funds for the struggling squad. But conscience seems to be in short supply at...

V.I. Warshawski's impossible god-daughter Bernie convinces her to look for August, a young film-maker who has disappeared. The evidence indicates that he has gone to Kansas in the company of Emerald, an older black movie actress who wants to film the story of her life. Her search takes V.I. from the military base Emerald was born on, to the farm where she grew up outside a university town, ploughing up past and present-day secrets as she goes. What...

Collection of short stories featuring gutsy female detective V.I. Warshawski, working her beat in the city of Chicago. FRIENDS & FAMILY CAN BE MURDER. Decked out in her silk shirts and no-nonsense attitude, V.I. has barely finished her morning coffee when she sees an ad in the paper asking for information about her own mother, long dead. Enter her newfound Italian cousin Vico, with a score to settle--in blood. So much for family ties. But when...

"V .I. Warshawski is famous for her cool under fire, her intelligence, her humor, her unflinching courage, and her love of good coffee. But even the strongest people sometimes need a break to recharge, so her friends send her to Kansas for a weekend of college basketball where Angela, one of her protégées, is playing. And that's where trouble finds V.I. Sabrina, one of Angela's roommates, disappears and V.I. agrees to try to find her. Finding a...

The year of her 15th birthday is one that Lara Grellier will never forget. The first Gulf War is raging in the Middle East; her unstable mother has become increasingly erratic in her behavior; the townspeople in Lawrence, Kan., are leery of the two unmarried women who have moved into the area and are rumored to be Wiccans, and Lara's brother has run off to join the Army.