Body Work by Sara Paretsky

This is my third Sara Paretsky novel about her female private investigator, V. (as in Victoria, Vic) I. Warshawski. Despite having a well-paying corporate customer, Vic gets pulled into pro bono service to solve the murders of two sisters. The intrigue involves veterans of the Iraqi conflict, as well as the corporations that provide security and are making tons of money for their efforts. The Guamans, the Latino family of the two murdered girls don’t seem to want Vic’s involvement since the defense contractor is paying them money to stay quiet about the details of the girls’ deaths. There is a great figure in this book, the Body Artist, and it is through her that all the plots are eventually tied together. The Body Artist, i.e., Karen Buckely and Fannie Pindero, performs at a hip club in Chicago. She appears nude on stage with some paintings on her body, and then she allows audience members to paint whatever they want on her as their artistic expressions. The whole act is weirdly disturbing to the audience who keep selling out the performances. But, in performance after performance, one guy keeps writing long numbers on her ass which is clearly a code to someone, but the codes are indecipherable. One woman, one of the sisters who gets murdered, keeps painting her dead sister’s picture with a mysterious logo which repeatedly agitates a veteran for no obvious reason. Paretsky does a good job keeping the connections between the plots a secret until the end. Overall, this was an average read. It is great to have a woman writing in this genre, and she has a different take on the detective’s life, but ultimately, there are better writers out there. I think I’m done with Paretsky.

Hard Time by Sara Paretsky

I tried a second Sara Paretsky novel, "Hard Time," and this one was a much better detective-mystery story than the first one I read, "Fire Sale." She uses Chicago as her stage, and she really does a good job of giving a full picture of life across multiple cultural and socioeconomic slices. It all starts with the PI, V.I. Warshawski, nearly running over a woman, and then spending the rest of the book trying to figure out how that happened, who she really was, who was behind her being in the middle of the street, etc. I have another one of her books in my stack of books to read, and I'm sure I'll give her another go.

WC Don

Fire Sale by Sara Paretsky

She has a prolific V. I. Warshawski novel series. Warshawski is a woman PI in Chicago (at least in this book, “Fire Sale”) who is originally from the deep Southside which she has abandoned for a better neighborhood. But, her old high school coach, who is dying, gets her to be the substitute head coach for a year, so Warshawski is pulled back to her old neighborhood. She gets involved in the shenanigans and troubles of the Southside. Paretsky writes about the gut-wrenching poverty and the greed of others taking advantage of the downtrodden. Of course there are murders to be solved. Overall, the story line is good, but in this book, she was rather wordy at times and the story did not always keep me interested. I was given this book and a couple more by her, so I'll give her another chance. Having spent some time in Chicago, including a visit to Comisky Park which is in the South, I enjoyed getting to more about these parts.

WC Don