V.I. Warshawski

Tracking down missing persons is part of V.I. Warshawski’s job. But Lamont Gadsden has been missing for more than forty years—last seen heading out into the 1967 blizzard, in the midst of Chicago’s racial unrest. V.I. figured the search would be futile. She didn’t realize it would be lethal … or lead to troubling discoveries about her own family. And when her young cousin Petra disappears, an angry preacher, a jailed gangbanger, and politics from both past and present interconnect—and plunge V.I. into a mystery as unsettling as the ’60s themselves.

Chicago’s Club Gouge attracts an eclectic audience, from bohemian types to Ukranian mobsters to young men just back from the war. And tonight, V.I. Warshawski is in the crowd too. The edgy stage show stars The Body Artist, who invites audience members to draw on her naked flesh. But things get a lot edgier when a woman sketches a picture on the Body Artist—and one of the veterans flies into a drunken rage. Next thing V.I. knows, she’s cradling the woman’s dying body in an alley, and a PTSD-stricken soldier is presumed guilty.

When V. I. Warshawski, the hardest-working of private eyes, goes out one night, a stranger is shot and dies in her arms. V.I. has been visiting Club Gouge, where a woman known as the Body Artist turns her naked body into a canvas for the audience to paint on. The show attracts all kinds of people, from Ukrainian mobsters and Iraq war veterans. A tormented young painter shows up too, and the intricate designs she creates drive one of the soldiers into a violent rage.

Carmilla, Queen of the Night, is a shape-shifting raven whose fictional exploits thrill girls all over the world. When tweens in Chicago's Carmilla Club hold an initiation ritual in an abandoned cemetery, they stumble on an actual corpse, a man stabbed through the heart in a vampire-style slaying. The girls include daughters of some of Chicago's most powerful families. For V.I. Warshawski, the questions multiply faster than the answers. Is the killing linked to a hostile media campaign against Sophy Durango?

When a group of Chicago tweens holds a ritual in an abandoned cemetery, they stumble on an actual corpse—stabbed through the heart in a vampire-style slaying. V.I. Warshawski arrives on the scene to escort the girls home—but protecting them places her at the tangled center of the investigation. And the girls include daughters of some of Chicago’s most powerful families: the grandfather of one, Chaim Salanter, is among the world’s wealthiest men; the mother of another, Sophy Durango, is running for the United States Senate.

When private eye V.I. Warshawski is called out to a derelict drug house in a rural town just south of Chicago, she discovers something she wasn't expecting: the mutilated corpse of a man, dumped in a cornfield. It is a discovery that throws V.I. into the fascinating world of physics and invention: a design that sparked the construction of the computer as we know it, the development of nuclear weapons, the wonder of Newton's prisms and a train of dramatic events that occurred in wartime Vienna.

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.

Twenty-five years ago, Stella Guzzo beat her daughter to death and then walked up the street to play bingo at her church. V. I. Warshawski grew up with the Guzzo family. She dated Frank Guzzo when they were teens and knew Stella's murderous rages firsthand. She didn't think about the family again until the day Frank came to her office, wanting V. I. to help his mother with an exoneration claim. The detective wants no part of Stella Guzzo's world, but she doesn't feel able to say no.

No one would accuse V.I. Warshawski of backing down from a fight, but she’d happily avoid tangling with Chicago political bosses. Yet that’s what she ends up doing when she responds to a plea for help from an old high school flame, Frank Guzzo. Frank’s mother Stella was convicted of killing his kid sister, but now that she’s out of prison, she’s looking for exoneration. Even though the Warshawskis and Stella never got along, V.I. agrees to make a few inquiries after she sees how hard life has been on Frank and her other childhood friends.

V. I. Warshawski's impossible goddaughter, Bernie, convinces her to look for August, a young filmmaker 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.

LEE CHILD says she's ""a genius."" P.D. JAMES called her ""the most remarkable"" of today's suspense writers. STIEG LARSSON loved her work so much, he named her in his novels. And now SARA PARETSKY returns with the most extraordinary novel of her legendary career: FALLOUT. Before there was...

Sara Paretsky follows her instant New York Times bestseller Fallout—her most widely read novel in years—with an extraordinary adventure that pits her acclaimed detective, V.I. Warshawski, against some of today’s most powerful figures. Legendary sleuth V.I. Warshawski returns to the Windy...

The new VI Warshawski novel from the New York Times best-selling author pits acclaimed detective VI Warshawski against some of today's most powerful figures. Legendary sleuth VI Warshawski returns to the Windy City to save an old friend's nephew from a murder arrest. The case involves a stolen artifact that could implicate a shadowy network of international criminals. As VI investigates, the detective soon finds herself tangling with the Russian mob, ISIS backers and a shady network of stock scams and stolen art that stretches from Chicago to the East Indies and the Middle East. 

Chicago is the city of broad shoulders, but V.I. Warshawski knows its politics: 'Pay to Play.' Money changes hands in the middle of the night; by morning, buildings and parks have been replaced by billion-dollar projects. Private Investigator V.I. gets pulled into one of these clandestine deals when her impetuous goddaughter Bernie tries to rescue a famed Singer-Songwriter, now living on the streets. Thanks to Bernie, V.I. finds herself in the path of some developers whose negotiating strategy is simple: they bulldoze - or kill - any obstacle in their way.

“V.I. Warshawski is as dogged and ferocious as ever. So is Sara Paretsky, who is at the top of her crime novel game.” — C.J. Box Chicago’s legendary detective, V.I. Warshawski, knows her city’s rotten underbelly better than most, but she’s unable to avoid it when her goddaughter...

""Readers can find comfort in the dedication V.I. gives the cries for help she hears from friends, neighbors, and strangers... Very few series authors deliver as masterfully as Sara Paretsky.” — San Francisco Book Review Legendary detective V.I. Warshawski uncovers a nefarious conspiracy...

On her way home from an all-night surveillance job, V.I. Warshawski's dogs lead her on a mad chase that ends when they find a badly injured teen hiding in the rocks along Lake Michigan. The girl only regains consciousness long enough to utter one enigmatic word. V.I. helps bring her to a hospital, but not long after, she vanishes before anyone can discover her identity. As V.I. attempts to find her, the detective uncovers an ugly consortium of Chicago power brokers and mobsters who are prepared to kill the girl before VI can save her.

When a young woman named Sabrina disappears without a trace in Kansas, private investigator V.I. Warshawski knows she must act fast. But when she discovers Sabrina close to death in a drug house, the locals don't take kindly to her - and Sabrina's mother becomes suspicious. V.I. finds herself under the sharp gaze of the FBI - and the men running the county's opioid distribution. And when a dead body surfaces a few days later, V.I. is pitched headlong into a battle between the locals - with roots that date all the way back to the American Civil War.

Legendary detective V.I. Warshawski uncovers a mystery with roots dating back to the Civil War in this edge-of-your-seat thriller from New York Times bestseller Sara Paretsky. V .I. Warshawski is famous for her cool under fire, her intelligence, her humor, her unflinching courage, and her love...