Reluctantly agreeing to help when an old boyfriend asks her to exonerate his mother for the murder of his sister, V. I. Warshawski is forced to confront ugly politics and violent elements in her hometown.

"New York Times-bestselling author Sara Paretsky's brilliant protagonist V.I. Warshawski returns in another hard-hitting entry, combining razor-sharp plotting and compelling characters with a heady mix of timely political and social themes. V.I. Warshawski's closest friend in Chicago is the Viennese-born doctor Lotty Herschel, who lost most of her family in the Holocaust. Lotty escaped to London in 1939 on the Kindertransport with a childhood playmate,...

"Legendary detective V.I. Warshawski uncovers a nefarious conspiracy preying on Chicago's weak and vulnerable, in this thrilling novel from New York Times bestseller Sara Paretsky. On her way home from an all-night surveillance job, V.I. Warshawski is led by her dogs on a mad chase that ends when they discover a badly injured teen hiding in the rocks along Lake Michigan. The girl only regains consciousness long enough to utter one enigmatic word....

Reluctantly agreeing to help when an old boyfriend asks her to exonerate his mother for the murder of his sister, V. I. Warshawski is forced to confront ugly politics and violent elements in her hometown.

When the teenage daughters of some of Chicago's most influential families discover the body of a ritually murdered victim, investigator Warshawski explores theories that the killing is linked to a hostile media campaign against a senatorial candidate or a wealthy patriarch's childhood in Nazi-occupied Lithuania.

V.I. Warshawski's great-aunt Rosa summons the detective to her cold suburban home. Rosa made V.I.'s childhood miserable and the detective resents the command to help her aunt prove she didn't embezzle five million dollars from a local Dominican priory. All hell breaks loose when a mysterious opponent tries to take Vic off the case by throwing acid in her eyes and burning down her apartment.

V.I. Warshawski's impossible god-daughter Bernie convinces her to look for August, a young film-maker who has disappeared. The evidence indicates that he has gone to Kansas in the company of Emerald, an older black movie actress who wants to film the story of her life. Her search takes V.I. from the military base Emerald was born on, to the farm where she grew up outside a university town, ploughing up past and present-day secrets as she goes. What...