Body Work
‘Doctors take days off – why not PIs?’ V.I. Warshawski demands. But when the hardest-working of private eyes goes out one night, a stranger is shot and dies in her arms. V.I. has been visiting Club Gouge, Chicago’s edgiest night spot, where a woman known as the Body Artist turns her naked body into a canvas for the audience to paint on. The show attracts all kinds of people, from a menacing off-duty cop to Ukrainian mobsters and Iraq war veterans – and V.I.’s impetuous cousin, Petra. A tormented young painter shows up too, and the intricate designs she creates on the Body Artist drive one of the soldiers into a violent rage. When the painter is shot, the police think it’s a clear-cut case: a shell-shocked war veteran goes off the rails. But the soldier’s family hires V.I. to clear his name, and the detective uncovers a chain of ugly truths that stretches all the way from Iraq to Chicago’s South Side.
THE 14TH BOOK IN THE THRILLING V.I. WARSHAWSKI SERIES.
THE 14TH BOOK IN THE THRILLING V.I. WARSHAWSKI SERIES.
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Reviews
'The thing about Sara Paretsky is, she's tough . . . she doesn't flinch from examining old social injustices others might find too shameful (and too painful) to dig up'
'Sara Paretsky is on top form . . . HARDBALL is a haunting novel, skilfully combining power politics and intensely personal events'
'Within a racial melting pot, Paretsky hits her own personal best; HARDBALL takes the thinking woman's detective to a new level of excellence'
'Paretsky has evoked - and celebrated - the multiplicity of Chicago's neighbourhoods, its old and new immigrants and its tragic history of race relations; and these years of America's financial and political decadence seem to have rekindled her passion for social justice.'
'HARDBALL is a big, chewy, old-fashioned yarn about a P.I. looking into a sprawling, decade-spanning web of police corruption. But when it's this entertaining, there's nothing wrong with that at all'
'She is writing with the kind of passion for social justice that inspired Chandler and Hammett . . . a narrative as gripping as it is emotionally wrenching.'
'Some crime series grow stale over time, but there's no sign of fatigue here. This is partly because the recurring characters continue to develop and engage the reader, and partly because of the moral intelligence that informs the writing.'
'Details are so rich and the dialogue so snappy that the mystery whizzes by.'
With the creation of V.I. Warshawski, Sara Paretsky did more than anyone to change the face of contemporary women's fiction.