Status Updates From Pay Dirt (V.I. Warshawski, ...

3.5 stars. I’m not sure if I should be happy or sad that VI hasn’t changed a bit over the years.

Pay Dirt is the twenty-second novel I’ve written about my private detective, V.I. Warshawski. When she and I started, I didn’t imagine such a long career for either of us. My goals with my first novel, Indemnity Only, were both simple and grandiose: I wanted to create a woman private eye, and I wanted to change the narrative about women in fiction.

Perhaps a more moral person would have ripped up the check Pauline handed me. However, it seemed like the right amount, a hundred thousand for six weeks of travail and lost income, for the expenses of life on the road, for Faye Mitchell’s fee. Mitchell wasn’t running a charity, she said, and she billed accordingly. ANOTHER TRADITION: BIG PAYOFFS IN THE END

I could hear seconds ticking away in my head. I needed to find something more concrete while I was here. Proof of what was really underway on Yancy, proof of where Clarina died, better still, proof of why she died.