Critical Mass

V.I. Warshawski, Book 16

By: Sara Paretsky

Narrated by: Susan Ericksen

Chicago’s V.I. Warshawski “is at her stubborn, reckless, compassionate best in this complicated page-turner about selfish secrets passed down through generations” (Booklist).

In 1939, Dr. Lotty Herschel, V.I. Warshawki’s closest friend in Chicago, escaped the Holocaust in Vienna with her childhood playmate, Kitty Saginor Binder. Though the two drifted and animosities grew between them over the years, when Kitty’s daughter finds her life in danger, she turns to Lotty for help. In turn, Lotty summons V.I. to take the case.

The threats on the daughter’s life at first seem a simple case of bad drug dealings, but V.I. soon discovers that they are just the tip of an iceberg of lies secrets and silence whose origins trace back to the deadly race among America, Germany, Japan, and England to develop the atomic bomb. And while the secrets may be old, the people who continue to guard them will do anything to make sure they stay buried …

“Paretsky at her best, describing with a reporter’s eye and a painter’s vision the light and texture of a place.”—Washington Post

©2013 Sara Paretsky (P)2025 Recorded Books

Lotti’s backstory.

Interesting character, I enjoy hearing more about and her complicated life. It’s embedded in the contemporary story.

First Rate Writing & Performing

Sara Paretsky has done it again with an action-packed VI Warshawsky mystery. Susan Erickson will always be the voice of VI.