Fallout

February 27, 2017
In MWA Grand Master Paretsky’s intriguing, if flawed, 19th V.I. Warshawski novel (after 2015’s Brushback), the Chicago PI looks into the disappearance of August Veriden, a quiet young man with dreams of working behind the camera. She learns that August became enamored of Emerald Ferring, a black actress well known in her community but little known to white people. With some cajoling, Warshawski persuades Emerald’s close friends to let her follow August and Emerald’s path to the University of Kansas in Lawrence, where Emerald was once a student and August was planning to film a documentary about her. On arrival in Lawrence, the detective is welcomed with less-than-open arms. Unfortunately, Paretsky loses the Emerald thread midway as Warshawski becomes entangled in small-town politics, particularly those involving the mentally ill daughter of an eminent scientist and the town’s history as a spot for anti-nuke protests in the 1980s. Sharply drawn characters partly compensate for a plot that’s fascinating when it stays on track but too often meanders. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Agency.

March 15, 2017
Think V.I. Warshawski butts too many heads in Chicago? Wait till you see what happens when she and her dog, Peppy, leave the big city for the wide-open spaces of Kansas.Angela Creedy, a hockey teammate of Bernadine Fouchard, whom Warshawki rescued last time out (Brush Back, 2015), is worried because her cousin, film student August Veriden, is accused of ransacking the Six-Points Gym, where he works as a personal trainer, and is nowhere to be found by police officers who want to ask him all about drugs. Reluctantly agreeing to look for him, Warshawski follows his trail to Lawrence, Kansas, in the company of Emmy-winning actress Emerald Ferring, who evidently believed in August so completely that she persuaded him to help her look into a hidden chapter in her past. Preliminary inquiries in Kansas link the 1983 death of Emerald's mother, Lucinda, to an anti-nuclear protest she'd taken a vociferous role in only six weeks before. Crazy, homeless Sonia Kiel replies to one of Warshawski's circulars seeking information about the missing pair by phoning to say that she'd seen them dancing on her true love's grave. But by the time Warshawski shows up to meet her, she's lying unconscious in a nearby stairwell along with student Naomi Wissenhurst. The attempt to follow up her information is thwarted by the insistence of Sonia's parents, retired KU professor Nathan Kiel and his wife, Shirley, that Sonia's ravings can't be trusted and that the true love from all those years ago, grad student Matt Chastain, isn't buried nearby and probably isn't even dead. Even after Warshawski's determined that the 1983 demonstration continues to have calamitous aftershocks more than 30 years later, she's still helpless to stop a continuing series of deaths not so much mysterious as uncanny. A steadily deepening historical nightmare that ends up implicating pretty much everyone in sight in a multilayered coverup. Whodunit purists may be frustrated at the absence of a single villain to blame, but Paretsky's legion of fans will rejoice in her heroically scaled 20th novel.

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Starred review from April 1, 2017
Hard to believe anything could drive V. I. Warshawski out of Chicago, but here she is, in this eighteenth series entry, in Lawrence, Kansas. The case starts in Chicago, where she's hired to track down a missing film student and a black actress popular in the 1980s. The pair have headed to Kansas, the actress' childhood home, to film her life story, so V. I., along with her dog, Peppy, hits the road. In Lawrence, V. I.'s search pulls her into conflicts with the military at nearby Fort Riley, with the county sheriff, and with a suspicious agribusiness with government connections. Racial tensions still simmer in this outwardly liberal bastion that was founded by abolitionists, and V. I., the outsider from Chicago who makes no adjustment to her brash style, is not viewed positively by anyone. She learns of secrets, murders, and unsolved disappearances related to 1980s protests against a missile silo, and, since these turn out to be critical to her current case, she persists, putting her life in jeopardy. The result is addictive storytelling with Paretsky in fine form. Vic may not know the country, but Paretsky, who grew up near Lawrence, is on home turf. She describes the landscape and its denizens with the same affection and sharp eye with which she depicts Chicago neighborhoods. Paretsky is at the top of her game here, evidenced by the satisfying, layered puzzle peopled by a vividly described and intriguing cast.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

November 15, 2016

Famed investigator V.I. Warshawski is back, and--surprise!--for the first time ever she's not in Chicago. Accompanied by her dog, she's in Kansas, crossing prairies dotted with Cold War-era missile silos as she hunts for a young film student and a waning film star. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.