Review by New York Times Review
What really matters in a Sara Paretsky mystery are the crimes behind the crimes - the corrupt politics, the class divisions, the economic inequities, the dirty business practices and all the other injustices that incite the wicked deeds we love to read about. BREAKDOWN (Putnam, $26.95) takes its first crack at a soft target: a cult series of lurid vampire novels that sends a group of impressionable preteenage girls into a graveyard to perform a giddy initiation ritual for their book club. But once V. I. Warshawski, the intrepid private eye who sees herself as "a street fighter, a product of the mills and ethnic wars of Chicago's Steel City," has rescued the girls from the trauma of discovering a murder victim, the true villains come into sharper focus. A right-wing news operation called the Global Entertainment Network seizes on the fact that two of the girls are related to left-wingers on its hit list. One is the daughter of a liberal university president who blocked the teaching of creationism in biology classes. The other is the granddaughter of the Jewish billionaire financing that same university president's campaign for a seat in the United States Senate. The network unleashes its most rabid attack dog, a faux-populist journalist named Wade Lawlor, to lead the assault, which extends to the private foundation funded by the grandfather to lend a hand to immigrants and refugees, and to encourage their children by establishing book clubs for little girls with a passion for reading. No one would call Paretsky a nuanced writer, and there are times when she sounds as shrill as Lawlor, whose televised rants against illegal aliens leave him with "spit flecking his lips." But her cause is righteous, and she certainly knows her enemy. In packaging its brutal politics as blood-sport entertainment, the network manages "to dirty up the news until the viewer can't tell truth from fiction." That's an offense that especially riles Paretsky's crusading sleuth, because the media giant bought and smashed a venerable newspaper that was once the pride of Chicago. A visit to a friend at the paper's gutted news division makes her remember their youthful vows to clean up the city. "Instead, fraud had spread along every corridor of American life and had infected the newsroom." And that crime-behind-the-crime really makes her fighting mad. Can't get enough of Chicago? The most dynamic character in Charlie Newton's fierce first novel, "Calumet City," and its terrific sequel, START SHOOTING (Doubleday, $25.95), is the Windy City - the down and dirty side of it, anyway. The narration alternates between a cop named Bobby Vargas, and Arleen Brennan, whose twin sister was raped and murdered back when they were all just 13. Now Bobby and his homicide detective brother, Ruben ("a fine doorway full of man"), are policing a gang war involving the Latin Kings, and Arleen is caught in the cross-fire. "The big gangs in the ghetto districts outnumber us 12 to 1 and have better guns," according to Bobby. "What's that say about America?" The plot is a hot mess, with Newton fielding multiple story lines, dual time frames and too many conspiracies. But the voices reverberate in your ears, and the smell of gunfire lingers long after the last man is down. There's both a pattern and a purpose to the superb historical mysteries produced by the mother-and-son writing partners known as Charles Todd. Like THE CONFESSION (Morrow/HarperCollins, $25.99), the novels in their evocative Ian Rutledge series, set in the aftermath of World War I. always begin with a murder that sends him from Scotland Yard to some distant shire to be viewed with suspicion by the insular natives. But the hostile reception doesn't distress the detective, who was shellshocked at the Somme and takes no joy in the hurly-burly of community life. To complete the plot blueprint, the villagers are often safeguarding a collective secret, and the resolution of the mystery rarely restores peace. "The Confession" tweaks that plot template by introducing the murder victim while he still has breath, presenting himself at Scotland Yard and confessing to the murder of his cousin. But when the man's body washes up in the Thames, Rutledge undertakes another one of his solitary journeys, this time to a village in Essex whose ragged coastline "isolated the inhabitants in a world little changed with the passage of time." But the war put an end to that isolation, giving Rutledge another chance to bear witness to ruined lives and broken traditions, and to serve as chief mourner for all that has been lost. It's no big deal for an author to return to a beloved sleuth - but a beloved serial killer? That's the trick Val McDermid pulls off in THE RETRIBUTION (Atlantic Monthly, $25) when she revives Jacko Vance, the "charismatic, handsome, charming" and quite loco TV star who in his heyday murdered 17 teenage girls and was locked up in a maximum-security prison at the conclusion of an earlier thriller, "The Wire in the Blood." The series's sleuths, Dr. Tony Hill, a clinical psychologist, and Carol Jordan, a police officer, are already occupied with the hunt for a sadistic killer who is going after street prostitutes. But when they get word that their old nemesis has escaped from prison, they know they're prime targets for payback. Hill and Jordan are two very bright detectives, but you still want to toss them under the bus when Jacko, who is every bit as charming as he thinks he is, flashes his come-hither smile. V.I. Warshawski sees herself as a street fighter, 'a product of the mills and ethnic wars' of Chicago.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 8, 2012]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Both Paretsky and her sharp-tongued justice-seeker, V. I. Warshawski, remain formidable in the masterfully suspenseful fifteenth novel in this superb and adored Chicago-set series. Smart and pugnacious PI V. I. continues to follow leads no matter how many cherished outfits get ruined by mud, blood, sweat, and puke, including the evening gown she wears to a glitzy gala for Wade Lawlor, the star rabble-rouser and slanderer on GEN, a shrill right-wing network. V. I. is called away by Petra, her young cousin, now a regular in the series, to look for the teenage girls Petra works with in a program that brings together daughters of penniless immigrants with daughters of privilege. V. I. finds them in a cemetery, performing a ritual inspired by their ardor for a series of vampire novels. She also finds a dead man with a metal rod driven through his heart. The ensuing morally reprehensible case, which V. I. compares to a Rubik's Cube, involves class divides, a state mental hospital, warped brother-sister relationships, a tricked-out Camaro, a Holocaust survivor's tale, a wrongful murder conviction, and the politics of hate. V. I. reigns as crime fiction's spiky, headstrong warrior woman of conscience, and Paretsky, classy champion of the powerless, has never been more imaginative, rueful, transfixing, and righteous. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Named 2011 Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, best-selling crime writer Paretsky always draws readers en masse.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
At the start of MWA Grand Master Paretsky's riveting 15th novel featuring Chicago PI V.I. Warshawski (after 2010's Body Work), Warshawski goes in search of several 12- and 13-year-old girls, members of her cousin Petra's book club, who are out after curfew. Warshawski finds the girls in a cemetery, steps away from a recently deceased man, Miles Wuchnik, who she later learns was an unscrupulous PI. Media attention on two of the girls-the daughter of Sophy Durango, a liberal U.S. Senate candidate, and the granddaughter of Chaim Salanter, a wealthy Jewish businessman linked to Durango's campaign-intensifies an already mudslinging political race, particularly when it's revealed that the girls were trying to perform a "vampire" ritual from their favorite supernatural novel. Meanwhile, bigoted TV host Wade Lawlor attempts to derail Durango's campaign and slander Salanter with unfounded accusations about Salanter's treatment under the Nazis. Amid all the ugly politics, Warshawski once again proves a dogged champion for the truth at any cost. Agent: Dominick Abel. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Fans of V.I. Warshawski will breathe a sigh of relief as she returns in another novel filled with action, plot twists, and political maneuverings sure to set the brain and heart on edge. V.I. is called to round up teenage girls who are out in a cemetery past curfew. The girls are initiating a new member into their secret club celebrating a beloved author, and they believe they will become shape-shifters just like their favorite fictional character. Their ritual, however, is ruined when they stumble upon a very real murder victim, killed with a stake through the heart. As the investigation plays out, bodies pile up, and V.I. unravels the strings that lead from the girls and their powerful families through competing political campaigns, growing anti-immigrant sentiment, historical involvement through generations, and resurfacing stories from German-occupied Lithuania. VERDICT The 14th V.I. Warshawski title (after Body Work) is nothing less than riveting, which is what Paretsky fans expect. Lots of topical moments and references to the current sociopolitical atmosphere keep this book charged and moving. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 7/5/11.]-Julie Kane, Sweet Briar Coll. Lib., VA (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Body Work, 2010, etc.); in fact, he meets with her repeatedly only to warn her to stay off the case. Not that she's not distracted all on her own, since her old law school friend, bipolar attorney Leydon Ashford, has just been thrown from a height at Rockefeller Chapel and lies near death. Leydon's last cryptic message--"I saw him on the catafalque"--seems to connect the attack on her to Wuchnik's murder. Can V.I. put together the pieces in time to save the young witnesses from the killer? 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.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
