The first V.I. Warshawski novel! • “[V.I. Warshawski] is . . . wonderful company and a rich discovery awaiting those who have yet to meet her.”—Los Angeles Times Meeting an anonymous client late on a sizzling summer night is asking for trouble. But trouble is Chicago private eye V.I. Warshwski’s specialty. Her client says he’s the prominent banker John Thayer. Turns out he’s not. He says his son’s girlfriend, Anita Hill, is missing. Turns out that’s not her real name. V.I.’s search turns up someone soon enough—the real John Thayer’s son, and he’s dead. Who’s V.I.'s client? Why has she been set up and sent out on a wild-goose chase? By the time she's got it figured, things are hotter—and deadlier—than Chicago in July. V.I.’s in a desperate race against time. At stake: a young woman’s life.
V.I. Warshawski Series
This series follows the adventures of a private investigator navigating the gritty streets of Chicago. She tackles complex cases that delve into the city's underbelly and the complexities of human nature. Each installment is packed with suspense, intrigue, and a fiercely independent female lead who isn't afraid to confront danger. These stories offer classic detective noir with a contemporary edge and a strong sense of place.
Recommended Reading Order
V. I. Warshawski, private investigator, Chicago, USA. People imagine private detectives to be tired-looking men in raincoats, but Vic is female. She's tough, beautiful, carries a gun - and goes on asking questions until she gets answers. When her cousin Boom Boom dies in an accident, Vic is naturally upset. She wants to know how and why the accident happened, and she isn't satisfied by the answers she gets. So she goes on asking questions . . . and more people start to die.
Killing Orders
- 368 pages
- 13 hours of reading
When Detective V.I. Warshawski begins an investigation of a three million dollar theft from a monastery, acid is thrown in her face, and she suspects she might be taking on the Vatican, the Mafia, and an international conglomerate.
Bitter Medicine
- 259 pages
- 10 hours of reading
Chicago private eye V.I. Warshawski knows from the start that Consuelo Alvarado's baby is trouble. Consuelo is sixteen. Diabetic. And the daughter of a friend. When she goes into labor too early, even V.I.'s wild drive to get her to the hospital can't save either Consuelo or her child. Soon V.I. is investigating possible malpractice at the emergency room--and falling for a doctor who works there. Mixing business and love is always bad medicine, but V.I. finds herself listening to her heart, not her head. And when a brutal murder and the violent destruction of a women's clinic put her at the center of a very dirty conspiracy, justice may be the only remedy for a hurt that cuts deep...and chills right to the bone....
Toxic Shock
- 320 pages
- 12 hours of reading
Vic Warshawski agrees to investigate the paternity of Caroline Djiak, whose mother, Louisa, is dying. Following some leads, Vic visits Louisa's old workplace, the Xerxes Chemical Plant. What she finds is corruption and cruelty on a horrifying scale, where profit has more value than human life.
Burn Marks
- 340 pages
- 12 hours of reading
Someone knocking on the door at 3 A.M. is never good news. For V.I. Warshawski, the bad news arrives in the form of her wacky, unwelcome aunt Elena. The fire that has just burned down a sleazy SRO hotel has brought Elena to V.I.'s doorstep. Uncovering an arsonist -- and the secrets hidden behind Elena's boozy smile -- will send V.I. into the seedy world of Chicago's homeless... into the Windy City's backroom deals and bedroom politics, where new schemers and old cronies team up to get V.I. off the case -- by hook, by crook, or by homicide.
Guardian Angel
- 448 pages
- 16 hours of reading
Vic begins by investigating the mysterious death of a disaffected alcoholic vagrant - this leads her to uncover a trail of financial fraud and corruption with a disconcerting personal twist. By the author of Killing Orders, Bitter Medicine and Burnt Marks.
Tunnel Vision
- 352 pages
- 13 hours of reading
Stubbornness has landed private eye V.I. Warshawski in big trouble at her Chicago office. With her grand old Loop building set to be razed, she's become a hold-out tenant amid frayed wiring and scary, empty corridors. Then she finds a homeless woman with three kids in the basement, and before she can rescue them, they disappear. Worst of all, she's been implicated in a murder--after the body of Deirdre Messenger, a prominent lawyer's wife, turns up sprawled across her desk. V.I., who had volunteered with Deirdre at a women's shelter, suspects her death is linked to a case of upper-class domestic abuse so slickly concealed that the police refuse to believe it. Increasingly at odds with the cops, V.I. is blindly plunging ahead after the truth. And her path may lead to corruption at the highest levels.or deep into the abandoned tunnels beneath Chicago's streets, where secrets are hiding in the dark like a child's--or V.I.'s--worst nightmare.
Hard Time
- 432 pages
- 16 hours of reading
This work once again features the determined and passionate sleuth V.I. Warshawski. Here prison life and the entertainment industry merge when Murray Ryerson - a fellow investigator and friend of Warshawski, is assaulted and left for dead.
Total Recall
- 560 pages
- 20 hours of reading
V.I.'s friend is in terrible danger - from both past crimes and present evil . . . Lotty Herschel is more than just a friend to Vic Warshawski - she is a mentor. A Holocaust survivor, Lotty has built a good life for herself. So when a man with recovered memories of a childhood strikingly similar to her own starts to plague Lotty, V.I. - working on a difficult fraud case - tries to help in the only way she can: by examining his murky past. Struggling to decide who she can trust, V.I. is caught in a mystery that stretches from Switzerland and Germany to Chicago's South Side, and across many decades. As she digs deeper, V.I. moves closer to a shocking truth - a truth that could destroy her oldest friend. And may have fatal consequences for others . . .
V. I. Warshawski explores secrets and betrayals that stretch across four generations in this New York Times bestselling novel from one of the most compelling writers in American crime fiction... “A thoughtful, high-tension mystery.”—The Washington Post Book World “A genuinely exciting and disturbing thriller.”—Chicago Tribune As a favor to her most important client, V. I. agrees to check up on an empty mansion. But instead of a mysterious intruder she discovers a dead man in the ornamental pond—a reporter for an African-American publication whom the suburban cops are quick to dismiss as a suicide. When the man’s shattered family hires V. I. to investigate, she is sucked into a Gothic tale of sex, money, and power, leading her back to McCarthy-era blacklists and forward to some of the darker aspects of the Patriot Act. As V. I. finds herself penned in to a smaller and smaller space by an array of people trying to silence her, and before she can untangled the sordid truth, two more people will die—and V.I.’s own life will hang in the balance.
V. I. Warshawski: Fire Sale
A V. I. Warshawski Novel - International Edition
- 431 pages
- 16 hours of reading
V. I. Warshawski returns to her old South Chicago neighborhood to coach the girls' basketball team at her former high school, encountering a diverse group of players, including gangbangers, fundamentalists, and teenage moms. Among them is young Josie Dorrado, whose mother expresses concerns about sabotage at the flag manufacturing plant where she works. With By-Smart, the largest employer on the South Side, paying even less, Ms. Dorrado fears for her family's future if the plant shuts down. Her worries come to a head when the plant explodes, injuring V. I. and killing the owner. As V. I. investigates, she confronts the Bysen family, owners of By-Smart. The patriarch, William "Buffalo Bill" Bysen, is in his eighties and struggles with his quarrelsome sons, including the frustrated Young Mr. William and his idealistic grandson, "Billy the Kid." When Billy runs away with Josie, V. I. finds herself caught between the needs of both families. As she searches for the teenagers and a ruthless murderer, she risks her own life in the treacherous underbelly of Chicago.
Hardball
- 446 pages
- 16 hours of reading
How do you look for someone who vanished four decades ago? And how do you deal with the news that your father might have been a cop on the take? Ask V.I. Warshawski.
'Doctors take days off - why not PIs?' V.I. Warshawski demands. But when 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, Chicago's edgiest night spot, 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 a menacing off-duty cop to Ukrainian mobsters and Iraq war veterans - and V.I.'s impetuous cousin, Petra. A tormented young painter shows up too, and the intricate designs she creates on the Body Artist drive one of the soldiers into a violent rage. When the painter is shot, the police think it's a clear-cut case: a shell-shocked war veteran goes off the rails. But the soldier's family hires V.I. to clear his name, and the detective uncovers a chain of ugly truths that stretches all the way from Iraq to Chicago's South Side.
Breakdown
- 431 pages
- 16 hours of reading
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
Critical Mass
- 576 pages
- 21 hours of reading
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...
Brush Back
- 546 pages
- 20 hours of reading
Chicago’s V. I. Warshawski confronts crooked politicians and buried family secrets in this gritty mystery from New York Times bestselling author Sara Paretsky. 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. Only, that small favor leads her straight into the vipers’ nest of Illinois politics—and soon her main question isn’t about Stella’s case but whether or not she’ll make it out of this investigation alive... A Washington Post Best Mystery of 2015 Includes a Bonus Short Story!
Fallout
- 448 pages
- 16 hours of reading
V.I. Warshawski is the perfect heroine . . . What [Paretsky] brings to the classic private-eye novel is something entirely original; a dry crackle of wit and a deep emotional sympathy with her characters The Sunday Times
Shell Game: A V.I. Warshawski Novel
- 560 pages
- 20 hours of reading
When V.I. Warshawski gets word that her close friend and mentor Lotty Herschel’s nephew has become a murder suspect, the legendary detective will do everything to save him. The cops found Felix Herschel’s name and phone number on the unknown victim’s remains, but Felix insists he doesn’t know why. Soon Vic discovers that the dead man was obsessed with Middle Eastern archeology—the first clue in a bewildering case.But the trouble multiplies when Vic’s long-lost niece, Reno, goes missing. Reno is harboring a secret that may cost her her life. V.I. can hear the clock ticking on her niece’s safety and is frantic in her efforts to find her. She won’t leave any stone unturned until these very personal cases are cleared—a complex investigation that will entangle the Russian mob, ISIS backers, rogue ICE agents, a nefarious corporation preying on the poor, and a shady network of stock scams and stolen antiquities stretching from Chicago to the East Indies and the Middle East.
The edge-of-seat new crime novel featuring America's toughest and most caring private eye, V.I. Warshawski.
Related books
V.I. for Short
- 256 pages
- 9 hours of reading
This volume contains nine stories about V.I. Warshawski in which the private eye uses her judgement, skills and intuition to get the better of her adversaries. Playing on the themes of family, honour, trust and friendship, she proves that the truth can usually be bought to light.
