V. I. Warshawski mysteries

"When Chicago Black Hawks hockey legend Boom Boom Warshawski slips off a warf and drowns in Lake Michigan, his private-eye cousin questions the accidental death report and rumors of suicide. Armed with a bottle of Black Label and a Smith & Wesson, V.I. follows a trail of violence and corruption to the center of the Windy City's powerful shipping industry. Dodging elaborate attempts on her life with characteristic grit and humor, the one-of-a-kind...

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,...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Another triumph for Ms. Paretsky, her most captivating novel yet . . . V.I. herself [is] undoubtedly one of the best-written characters in mystery fiction.”—The Baltimore Sun
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...

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...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A spectacular mystery—complex, fast-paced yet ruminative, and imbued with the grim awareness, shared by all intelligent hard-boiled novels, that the past always catches up with us . . . a thrilling and even moving mystery.”—The Washington Post Book World
V.I.’s journey begins with a national conference in downtown Chicago, where angry protesters are calling...

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“Takes off with a bang—literally...V. I. remains a paragon among PIs, and Fire Sale is one of Paretsky’s best books yet.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch 
A conscience can weigh a PI down more than the heaviest firearm—and get her into more trouble too. It’s that nagging conscience that makes V. I. Warshawski agree to fill in as coach for the girls’...

A shooting in Chicago is nothing new, certainly not to V.I., who is hired by a veteran's family to clear his name after his arrest for the murder of a performer known as the Body Artist. As V.I. seeks answers, her investigation will take her from the North Side of Chicago to the far reaches of the Gulf War.

"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,...

To her parents, she's Victoria Iphigenia. To her friends, she's Vic. But to clients seeking her talents as a detective, she's V.I. And her new case will lead her from her native Chicago and into Kansas, on the trail of a vanished film student and a faded Hollywood star. Accompanied by her dog, V.I. tracks her quarry through a university town, across fields where missile silos once flourished - and into a past riven by long-simmering racial tensions,...

Chicago may be the city of broad shoulders, but its political law is "Pay to Play." Money changes hands in the middle of the night, and by morning, buildings and parks are replaced by billion-dollar projects. Chicago PI V.I. Warshawski gets pulled into one of these clandestine deals through her impetuous goddaughter, Bernie Fouchard. Bernie tries to rescue Lydia Zamir, a famed singer-songwriter now living on the streets; Zamir's life fell apart when...

"V .I. Warshawski is famous for her cool under fire, her intelligence, her humor, her unflinching courage, and her love of good coffee. But even the strongest people sometimes need a break to recharge, so her friends send her to Kansas for a weekend of college basketball where Angela, one of her protégées, is playing. And that's where trouble finds V.I. Sabrina, one of Angela's roommates, disappears and V.I. agrees to try to find her. Finding a...