This was the 11th of Paretsky’s novels featuring V. I. Warshawski. The first came out in 1982; the 22nd came out in 2024; you can pre-order the 23rd now. The author’s own website and other sources make some pretty big claims about the challenging, transformative effect of these novels on the mystery genre. The innovation was to have the hard-boiled private eye protagonist be a woman with something of a feminist consciousness. To be honest, that doesn’t sound like a massive genre transgression, and it’s easy enough to think of precursors. That said, perhaps this did count as wild novelty back in 1982; let’s remember that the 1993 Cornwell novel was the first Gold Dagger winner to straightforwardly star a woman.
Anyway, this 2004 outing is probably not the one to use as a test case for these claims. 20 years and 11 books on from debut, this feels like an author writing comfortably, settling fairly easily back into character and setting, not pushing too hard at the limits of what either can do.
Warshawski gets drawn into investigating the death of a black journalist, Marcus Whitby, whose body is found in the pond of a property belonging to some rich white folk. They live in a sort of enclave along with lots of other rich white folk, all of whom have known each other for decades or longer, all of whom have been entangled in various ways: enemies and allies, partners and rivals, in love, politics, and business. Do you think that this complicated web of entanglements will somehow turn out to be significant in Whitby’s death, which the tame local police insist on treating as an accident? You do? You’re right!
Investigating the entanglements allows Warshawski to make some punching-up points about how deeply weird rich white-folk life looks from a hardscrabble immigrant perspective. And a sub-plot about an Egyptian immigrant on the run from the feds, plus a historical link to the McCarthy era, allows Paretsky to get in some earnest debates on the tensions between the traditional freedoms of the US citizen and the invasive surveillance demands of the post-9/11 security regime. This gets a bit too earnest at times, but it’s salutary to be reminded that people were really worried 20 years ago about federal agencies going after immigrants on flimsy pretexts. Plus ça change, etc.
Setting aside the politics, the mystery hits most of the beats of the hard-boiled genre satisfyingly enough. It’s all pretty recognisable, but it’s not too pat. Again, comfortable: no straining against what the genre expects. The thing probably goes on a bit too long, there’s probably a couple of characters too many, there’s a few scenes that don’t earn their keep. But there’s many worse things to be than comfortable.