Her and I didn't always get along. But I've learned to love her. And she has learned to trust me. Well, you know what I mean. The point is that my pre-order for Sara Paretsky's 22nd V. I. Warshawski novel, Overboard, is in and ready to go. Next Tuesday... well... we already know what it is when our favorites release new books, eh? "On and poppin'" is the right expression for the occassion.
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"When V.I. Warshawski gets word that her close friend and mentor Lotty Herschel’s nephew has become a murder suspect, the legendary detective will do everything to save him. The cops found Felix Herschel’s name and phone number on the unknown victim’s remains, but Felix insists he doesn’t know why. Soon Vic discovers that the dead man was obsessed with Middle Eastern archaeology—the first clue in a bewildering case.
But the trouble multiplies when Vic’s long-lost niece, Reno, goes missing. Reno is harboring a secret that may cost her her life. V.I. can hear the clock ticking on her niece’s safety and is frantic in her efforts to find her. She won’t leave any stone unturned until these very personal cases are cleared—a complex investigation that will entangle the Russian mob, ISIS backers, rogue ICE agents, a nefarious corporation preying on the poor, and a shady network of stock scams and stolen antiquities stretching from Chicago to the East Indies and the Middle East."
"Chicago's V. I. Warshawski confronts crooked politicians and buried family secrets in the gritty new novel from New York Times - bestselling author Sara Paretsky.
No one would accuse V. I. Warshawski of backing down from a fight, but there are a few she'd be happy to avoid. High on that list is tangling with Chicago political bosses. Yet that's precisely what she ends up doing when she responds to Frank Guzzo's plea for help.
For six stormy weeks back in high school, V. I. thought she was in love with Frank. He broke up with her, she went off to college, he started driving trucks for Bagby Haulage. She forgot about him until the day his mother was convicted of bludgeoning his kid sister, Annie, to death. Stella Guzzo was an angry, uncooperative prisoner and did a full twenty-five years for her daughter's murder.
Newly released from prison, Stella is looking for exoneration, so Frank asks V. I. for help. V. I. doesn't want to get involved. Stella hated the Warshawskis, in particular V. I.'s adored mother, Gabriella.
But life has been hard on Frank and on V. I.'s other childhood friends, still stuck on the hardscrabble streets around the dead steel mills, and V. I. agrees to ask a few questions. Those questions lead her straight into the vipers' nest of Illinois politics she's wanted to avoid. When V. I. takes a beating at a youth meeting in her old hood, her main question becomes whether she will live long enough to find answers."
So let’s get into those quotes/passages I mentioned in my previous post on Marcia Muller’s Edwin of the Iron Shoes. But if you haven’t followed me to this post, these are the stand-out lines I loved. They're the lines where I received a flood of realization on how Muller’s protagonist, Sharon McCone, gave roots to women investigators in hard-boiled in crime fiction. Particularly roots for Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone and Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski characters. For more information, please refer to the previous post. I’m going to have to try to reduce this down to a few, though. If not, I’d probably serve up the entire book.“He was pushing too hard. I kept my voice level. ‘I’m not on my own; I’m an employee of All Souls. I joined them after the detective agency fired me for refusing to jump at a special assignment that would have humiliated me and set up an innocent man for a very messy and expensive divorce. And I don’t know about being what you call a “super-sleuth.” I’m competent. I’d say my strong point is knowing how to ask the right questions. Without trying to cram my words into other people’s mouths.’”
“On my way out of the kitchen, I grabbed a handful of cookies from the big jar that was always full of chocolate chips. They would be my dinner. Hank grinned and led me down the central hall to the second office on the right.”
I would not have believed it until seen. Actually, that’s not the case. I believed it! Intrigued it! Embraced it! Ran with it on my Amazon wishlist for about two and a half years (pitiful of me). Put it on my Kindle for over a year (double pitiful of me). And just this past February finally received it! You’re probably wondering what in the world am I talking about. So let me just get to the point: I finally read the first book in Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone hard-boiled private-eye series, Edwin of the Iron Shoes. I know. I know. Big deal, right? Well for me–a female-controlled crime fiction junkie–it most certainly is a big deal! Though I'm awfully late about it...
