Here, Paretsky dispatches her Chicago private investigator on a particularly surrealist adventure. VI takes a tumble into a dark overgrown pond while on night-time surveillance at a secluded mansion and encounters a dead journalist in the weeds. The subsequent police investigation strikes her as cursory and VI puts this down to the fact that the victim was black and that her body turned up in a well-heeled white residential area. As always, miscarriages of justice and police indifference have a galvanizing effect on Warshawski, who believes the death is not suicide but murder and her own investigations uncover some dark family secrets.

As often before, the police place obstructions in her path--but this time it appears to be two separate police departments and some very well-placed and influential people. Things are complicated by VI's involvement in another case--a youth with a possible terrorist background who is persona non grata with the government after 9/11. This is Paretsky as her admirers like her: Warshawski taking a dive into a heady brew of corruption, both personal and political. --Barry Forshaw

Here, Paretsky dispatches her Chicago private investigator on a particularly surrealist adventure. VI takes a tumble into a dark overgrown pond while on night-time surveillance at a secluded mansion and encounters a dead journalist in the weeds. The subsequent police investigation strikes her as cursory and VI puts this down to the fact that the victim was black and that her body turned up in a well-heeled white residential area. As always, miscarriages of justice and police indifference have a galvanizing effect on Warshawski, who believes the death is not suicide but murder and her own investigations uncover some dark family secrets.

As often before, the police place obstructions in her path--but this time it appears to be two separate police departments and some very well-placed and influential people. Things are complicated by VI's involvement in another case--a youth with a possible terrorist background who is persona non grata with the government after 9/11. This is Paretsky as her admirers like her: Warshawski taking a dive into a heady brew of corruption, both personal and political. --Barry Forshaw

Here, Paretsky dispatches her Chicago private investigator on a particularly surrealist adventure. VI takes a tumble into a dark overgrown pond while on night-time surveillance at a secluded mansion and encounters a dead journalist in the weeds. The subsequent police investigation strikes her as cursory and VI puts this down to the fact that the victim was black and that her body turned up in a well-heeled white residential area. As always, miscarriages of justice and police indifference have a galvanizing effect on Warshawski, who believes the death is not suicide but murder and her own investigations uncover some dark family secrets.

As often before, the police place obstructions in her path--but this time it appears to be two separate police departments and some very well-placed and influential people. Things are complicated by VI's involvement in another case--a youth with a possible terrorist background who is persona non grata with the government after 9/11. This is Paretsky as her admirers like her: Warshawski taking a dive into a heady brew of corruption, both personal and political. --Barry Forshaw

Here, Paretsky dispatches her Chicago private investigator on a particularly surrealist adventure. VI takes a tumble into a dark overgrown pond while on night-time surveillance at a secluded mansion and encounters a dead journalist in the weeds. The subsequent police investigation strikes her as cursory and VI puts this down to the fact that the victim was black and that her body turned up in a well-heeled white residential area. As always, miscarriages of justice and police indifference have a galvanizing effect on Warshawski, who believes the death is not suicide but murder and her own investigations uncover some dark family secrets.

As often before, the police place obstructions in her path--but this time it appears to be two separate police departments and some very well-placed and influential people. Things are complicated by VI's involvement in another case--a youth with a possible terrorist background who is persona non grata with the government after 9/11. This is Paretsky as her admirers like her: Warshawski taking a dive into a heady brew of corruption, both personal and political. --Barry Forshaw

Still suffering from "exhaustion of the spirit" in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, V.I. is hired to find out who may be sneaking into a vacated suburban mansion. Geraldine Graham, the home's 91-year-old former owner, who still lives nearby, claims she's seen lights in the attic at night. Our heroine suspects this is simply a bid by the wealthy dowager for greater attention, but agrees to do some nocturnal prowling--only to stumble (literally) across the body of a dead black journalist, Marcus Whitby, in the estate's ornamental pond and encounter a teenage girl fleeing the scene. The girl turns out to be Catherine Bayard, the granddaughter of Calvin Bayard, an unapologetically liberal book publisher who survived a hounding by the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee in the '50s without being blacklisted like so many of his authors. Digging deeper, V.I. learns that Whitby was doing research for a book about an African-American dancer and anthropologist who had enjoyed Bayard's support before she too was branded a Communist. Was Whitby killed en route to visit Bayard, one of Graham's neighbors--and a man who has strangely vanished from public view? And is there any connection between this murder and the disappearance of an Egyptian dishwasher, or the recent demise of a right-wing attorney and Bayard foe, in whose apartment V.I. is attacked by an intruder?

Except for a few astounding turns of luck (including the 11th-hour discovery of a revealing audiotape left in a car's player), Paretsky rolls out a credible yarn here, enriched by meticulous character development and an agreeably ambiguous conclusion. The author's intention to link McCarthy-era abuses with post-9/11 government assaults on civil rights is obvious, without being didactic, and it adds currency to a fictional investigation that's already rife with sex, betrayal, and long-held secrets among the rich. It's good to see that V.I. the P.I. hasn't lost the compassion or righteousness that first made her attractive two decades ago, in Indemnity Only. --J. Kingston Pierce

Here, Paretsky dispatches her Chicago private investigator on a particularly surrealist adventure. VI takes a tumble into a dark overgrown pond while on night-time surveillance at a secluded mansion and encounters a dead journalist in the weeds. The subsequent police investigation strikes her as cursory and VI puts this down to the fact that the victim was black and that her body turned up in a well-heeled white residential area. As always, miscarriages of justice and police indifference have a galvanizing effect on Warshawski, who believes the death is not suicide but murder and her own investigations uncover some dark family secrets.

As often before, the police place obstructions in her path--but this time it appears to be two separate police departments and some very well-placed and influential people. Things are complicated by VI's involvement in another case--a youth with a possible terrorist background who is persona non grata with the government after 9/11. This is Paretsky as her admirers like her: Warshawski taking a dive into a heady brew of corruption, both personal and political. --Barry Forshaw

Here, Paretsky dispatches her Chicago private investigator on a particularly surrealist adventure. VI takes a tumble into a dark overgrown pond while on night-time surveillance at a secluded mansion and encounters a dead journalist in the weeds. The subsequent police investigation strikes her as cursory and VI puts this down to the fact that the victim was black and that her body turned up in a well-heeled white residential area. As always, miscarriages of justice and police indifference have a galvanizing effect on Warshawski, who believes the death is not suicide but murder and her own investigations uncover some dark family secrets.

As often before, the police place obstructions in her path--but this time it appears to be two separate police departments and some very well-placed and influential people. Things are complicated by VI's involvement in another case--a youth with a possible terrorist background who is persona non grata with the government after 9/11. This is Paretsky as her admirers like her: Warshawski taking a dive into a heady brew of corruption, both personal and political. --Barry Forshaw

Here, Paretsky dispatches her Chicago private investigator on a particularly surrealist adventure. VI takes a tumble into a dark overgrown pond while on night-time surveillance at a secluded mansion and encounters a dead journalist in the weeds. The subsequent police investigation strikes her as cursory and VI puts this down to the fact that the victim was black and that her body turned up in a well-heeled white residential area. As always, miscarriages of justice and police indifference have a galvanizing effect on Warshawski, who believes the death is not suicide but murder and her own investigations uncover some dark family secrets.

As often before, the police place obstructions in her path--but this time it appears to be two separate police departments and some very well-placed and influential people. Things are complicated by VI's involvement in another case--a youth with a possible terrorist background who is persona non grata with the government after 9/11. This is Paretsky as her admirers like her: Warshawski taking a dive into a heady brew of corruption, both personal and political. --Barry Forshaw

Still suffering from "exhaustion of the spirit" in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, V.I. is hired to find out who may be sneaking into a vacated suburban mansion. Geraldine Graham, the home's 91-year-old former owner, who still lives nearby, claims she's seen lights in the attic at night. Our heroine suspects this is simply a bid by the wealthy dowager for greater attention, but agrees to do some nocturnal prowling--only to stumble (literally) across the body of a dead black journalist, Marcus Whitby, in the estate's ornamental pond and encounter a teenage girl fleeing the scene. The girl turns out to be Catherine Bayard, the granddaughter of Calvin Bayard, an unapologetically liberal book publisher who survived a hounding by the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee in the '50s without being blacklisted like so many of his authors. Digging deeper, V.I. learns that Whitby was doing research for a book about an African-American dancer and anthropologist who had enjoyed Bayard's support before she too was branded a Communist. Was Whitby killed en route to visit Bayard, one of Graham's neighbors--and a man who has strangely vanished from public view? And is there any connection between this murder and the disappearance of an Egyptian dishwasher, or the recent demise of a right-wing attorney and Bayard foe, in whose apartment V.I. is attacked by an intruder?

Except for a few astounding turns of luck (including the 11th-hour discovery of a revealing audiotape left in a car's player), Paretsky rolls out a credible yarn here, enriched by meticulous character development and an agreeably ambiguous conclusion. The author's intention to link McCarthy-era abuses with post-9/11 government assaults on civil rights is obvious, without being didactic, and it adds currency to a fictional investigation that's already rife with sex, betrayal, and long-held secrets among the rich. It's good to see that V.I. the P.I. hasn't lost the compassion or righteousness that first made her attractive two decades ago, in Indemnity Only. --J. Kingston Pierce

Still suffering from "exhaustion of the spirit" in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, V.I. is hired to find out who may be sneaking into a vacated suburban mansion. Geraldine Graham, the home's 91-year-old former owner, who still lives nearby, claims she's seen lights in the attic at night. Our heroine suspects this is simply a bid by the wealthy dowager for greater attention, but agrees to do some nocturnal prowling--only to stumble (literally) across the body of a dead black journalist, Marcus Whitby, in the estate's ornamental pond and encounter a teenage girl fleeing the scene. The girl turns out to be Catherine Bayard, the granddaughter of Calvin Bayard, an unapologetically liberal book publisher who survived a hounding by the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee in the '50s without being blacklisted like so many of his authors. Digging deeper, V.I. learns that Whitby was doing research for a book about an African-American dancer and anthropologist who had enjoyed Bayard's support before she too was branded a Communist. Was Whitby killed en route to visit Bayard, one of Graham's neighbors--and a man who has strangely vanished from public view? And is there any connection between this murder and the disappearance of an Egyptian dishwasher, or the recent demise of a right-wing attorney and Bayard foe, in whose apartment V.I. is attacked by an intruder?

Except for a few astounding turns of luck (including the 11th-hour discovery of a revealing audiotape left in a car's player), Paretsky rolls out a credible yarn here, enriched by meticulous character development and an agreeably ambiguous conclusion. The author's intention to link McCarthy-era abuses with post-9/11 government assaults on civil rights is obvious, without being didactic, and it adds currency to a fictional investigation that's already rife with sex, betrayal, and long-held secrets among the rich. It's good to see that V.I. the P.I. hasn't lost the compassion or righteousness that first made her attractive two decades ago, in Indemnity Only. --J. Kingston Pierce

Here, Paretsky dispatches her Chicago private investigator on a particularly surrealist adventure. VI takes a tumble into a dark overgrown pond while on night-time surveillance at a secluded mansion and encounters a dead journalist in the weeds. The subsequent police investigation strikes her as cursory and VI puts this down to the fact that the victim was black and that her body turned up in a well-heeled white residential area. As always, miscarriages of justice and police indifference have a galvanizing effect on Warshawski, who believes the death is not suicide but murder and her own investigations uncover some dark family secrets.

As often before, the police place obstructions in her path--but this time it appears to be two separate police departments and some very well-placed and influential people. Things are complicated by VI's involvement in another case--a youth with a possible terrorist background who is persona non grata with the government after 9/11. This is Paretsky as her admirers like her: Warshawski taking a dive into a heady brew of corruption, both personal and political. --Barry Forshaw

Here, Paretsky dispatches her Chicago private investigator on a particularly surrealist adventure. VI takes a tumble into a dark overgrown pond while on night-time surveillance at a secluded mansion and encounters a dead journalist in the weeds. The subsequent police investigation strikes her as cursory and VI puts this down to the fact that the victim was black and that her body turned up in a well-heeled white residential area. As always, miscarriages of justice and police indifference have a galvanizing effect on Warshawski, who believes the death is not suicide but murder and her own investigations uncover some dark family secrets.

As often before, the police place obstructions in her path--but this time it appears to be two separate police departments and some very well-placed and influential people. Things are complicated by VI's involvement in another case--a youth with a possible terrorist background who is persona non grata with the government after 9/11. This is Paretsky as her admirers like her: Warshawski taking a dive into a heady brew of corruption, both personal and political. --Barry Forshaw

Here, Paretsky dispatches her Chicago private investigator on a particularly surrealist adventure. VI takes a tumble into a dark overgrown pond while on night-time surveillance at a secluded mansion and encounters a dead journalist in the weeds. The subsequent police investigation strikes her as cursory and VI puts this down to the fact that the victim was black and that her body turned up in a well-heeled white residential area. As always, miscarriages of justice and police indifference have a galvanizing effect on Warshawski, who believes the death is not suicide but murder and her own investigations uncover some dark family secrets.

As often before, the police place obstructions in her path--but this time it appears to be two separate police departments and some very well-placed and influential people. Things are complicated by VI's involvement in another case--a youth with a possible terrorist background who is persona non grata with the government after 9/11. This is Paretsky as her admirers like her: Warshawski taking a dive into a heady brew of corruption, both personal and political. --Barry Forshaw

Here, Paretsky dispatches her Chicago private investigator on a particularly surrealist adventure. VI takes a tumble into a dark overgrown pond while on night-time surveillance at a secluded mansion and encounters a dead journalist in the weeds. The subsequent police investigation strikes her as cursory and VI puts this down to the fact that the victim was black and that her body turned up in a well-heeled white residential area. As always, miscarriages of justice and police indifference have a galvanizing effect on Warshawski, who believes the death is not suicide but murder and her own investigations uncover some dark family secrets.

As often before, the police place obstructions in her path--but this time it appears to be two separate police departments and some very well-placed and influential people. Things are complicated by VI's involvement in another case--a youth with a possible terrorist background who is persona non grata with the government after 9/11. This is Paretsky as her admirers like her: Warshawski taking a dive into a heady brew of corruption, both personal and political. --Barry Forshaw

Still suffering from "exhaustion of the spirit" in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, V.I. is hired to find out who may be sneaking into a vacated suburban mansion. Geraldine Graham, the home's 91-year-old former owner, who still lives nearby, claims she's seen lights in the attic at night. Our heroine suspects this is simply a bid by the wealthy dowager for greater attention, but agrees to do some nocturnal prowling--only to stumble (literally) across the body of a dead black journalist, Marcus Whitby, in the estate's ornamental pond and encounter a teenage girl fleeing the scene. The girl turns out to be Catherine Bayard, the granddaughter of Calvin Bayard, an unapologetically liberal book publisher who survived a hounding by the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee in the '50s without being blacklisted like so many of his authors. Digging deeper, V.I. learns that Whitby was doing research for a book about an African-American dancer and anthropologist who had enjoyed Bayard's support before she too was branded a Communist. Was Whitby killed en route to visit Bayard, one of Graham's neighbors--and a man who has strangely vanished from public view? And is there any connection between this murder and the disappearance of an Egyptian dishwasher, or the recent demise of a right-wing attorney and Bayard foe, in whose apartment V.I. is attacked by an intruder?

Except for a few astounding turns of luck (including the 11th-hour discovery of a revealing audiotape left in a car's player), Paretsky rolls out a credible yarn here, enriched by meticulous character development and an agreeably ambiguous conclusion. The author's intention to link McCarthy-era abuses with post-9/11 government assaults on civil rights is obvious, without being didactic, and it adds currency to a fictional investigation that's already rife with sex, betrayal, and long-held secrets among the rich. It's good to see that V.I. the P.I. hasn't lost the compassion or righteousness that first made her attractive two decades ago, in Indemnity Only. --J. Kingston Pierce

Here, Paretsky dispatches her Chicago private investigator on a particularly surrealist adventure. VI takes a tumble into a dark overgrown pond while on night-time surveillance at a secluded mansion and encounters a dead journalist in the weeds. The subsequent police investigation strikes her as cursory and VI puts this down to the fact that the victim was black and that her body turned up in a well-heeled white residential area. As always, miscarriages of justice and police indifference have a galvanizing effect on Warshawski, who believes the death is not suicide but murder and her own investigations uncover some dark family secrets.

As often before, the police place obstructions in her path--but this time it appears to be two separate police departments and some very well-placed and influential people. Things are complicated by VI's involvement in another case--a youth with a possible terrorist background who is persona non grata with the government after 9/11. This is Paretsky as her admirers like her: Warshawski taking a dive into a heady brew of corruption, both personal and political. --Barry Forshaw

Here, Paretsky dispatches her Chicago private investigator on a particularly surrealist adventure. VI takes a tumble into a dark overgrown pond while on night-time surveillance at a secluded mansion and encounters a dead journalist in the weeds. The subsequent police investigation strikes her as cursory and VI puts this down to the fact that the victim was black and that her body turned up in a well-heeled white residential area. As always, miscarriages of justice and police indifference have a galvanizing effect on Warshawski, who believes the death is not suicide but murder and her own investigations uncover some dark family secrets.

As often before, the police place obstructions in her path--but this time it appears to be two separate police departments and some very well-placed and influential people. Things are complicated by VI's involvement in another case--a youth with a possible terrorist background who is persona non grata with the government after 9/11. This is Paretsky as her admirers like her: Warshawski taking a dive into a heady brew of corruption, both personal and political. --Barry Forshaw

Here, Paretsky dispatches her Chicago private investigator on a particularly surrealist adventure. VI takes a tumble into a dark overgrown pond while on night-time surveillance at a secluded mansion and encounters a dead journalist in the weeds. The subsequent police investigation strikes her as cursory and VI puts this down to the fact that the victim was black and that her body turned up in a well-heeled white residential area. As always, miscarriages of justice and police indifference have a galvanizing effect on Warshawski, who believes the death is not suicide but murder and her own investigations uncover some dark family secrets.

As often before, the police place obstructions in her path--but this time it appears to be two separate police departments and some very well-placed and influential people. Things are complicated by VI's involvement in another case--a youth with a possible terrorist background who is persona non grata with the government after 9/11. This is Paretsky as her admirers like her: Warshawski taking a dive into a heady brew of corruption, both personal and political. --Barry Forshaw

Still suffering from "exhaustion of the spirit" in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, V.I. is hired to find out who may be sneaking into a vacated suburban mansion. Geraldine Graham, the home's 91-year-old former owner, who still lives nearby, claims she's seen lights in the attic at night. Our heroine suspects this is simply a bid by the wealthy dowager for greater attention, but agrees to do some nocturnal prowling--only to stumble (literally) across the body of a dead black journalist, Marcus Whitby, in the estate's ornamental pond and encounter a teenage girl fleeing the scene. The girl turns out to be Catherine Bayard, the granddaughter of Calvin Bayard, an unapologetically liberal book publisher who survived a hounding by the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee in the '50s without being blacklisted like so many of his authors. Digging deeper, V.I. learns that Whitby was doing research for a book about an African-American dancer and anthropologist who had enjoyed Bayard's support before she too was branded a Communist. Was Whitby killed en route to visit Bayard, one of Graham's neighbors--and a man who has strangely vanished from public view? And is there any connection between this murder and the disappearance of an Egyptian dishwasher, or the recent demise of a right-wing attorney and Bayard foe, in whose apartment V.I. is attacked by an intruder?

Except for a few astounding turns of luck (including the 11th-hour discovery of a revealing audiotape left in a car's player), Paretsky rolls out a credible yarn here, enriched by meticulous character development and an agreeably ambiguous conclusion. The author's intention to link McCarthy-era abuses with post-9/11 government assaults on civil rights is obvious, without being didactic, and it adds currency to a fictional investigation that's already rife with sex, betrayal, and long-held secrets among the rich. It's good to see that V.I. the P.I. hasn't lost the compassion or righteousness that first made her attractive two decades ago, in Indemnity Only. --J. Kingston Pierce

Here, Paretsky dispatches her Chicago private investigator on a particularly surrealist adventure. VI takes a tumble into a dark overgrown pond while on night-time surveillance at a secluded mansion and encounters a dead journalist in the weeds. The subsequent police investigation strikes her as cursory and VI puts this down to the fact that the victim was black and that her body turned up in a well-heeled white residential area. As always, miscarriages of justice and police indifference have a galvanizing effect on Warshawski, who believes the death is not suicide but murder and her own investigations uncover some dark family secrets.

As often before, the police place obstructions in her path--but this time it appears to be two separate police departments and some very well-placed and influential people. Things are complicated by VI's involvement in another case--a youth with a possible terrorist background who is persona non grata with the government after 9/11. This is Paretsky as her admirers like her: Warshawski taking a dive into a heady brew of corruption, both personal and political. --Barry Forshaw