V.I. Warshawski Is Back

Sun., Sept. 19, 1999

Carolyn Nizzi Warmbold Atlan

“HARD TIME” BY SARA PARETSKY (DELACORTE, 382 PAGES, $24.95)

After a five-year absence, V.I. Warshawski, Chicago’s toughest female private detective, is back seeking justice on the city’s toughest streets. And, boy, was it worth the wait.

When Warshawski stops to help a dying hit-and-run victim, she is made the prime suspect by a corrupted cop. The dead woman, it turns out, was an escaped convict and former nanny to a prominent family. Pretty soon, people involved in the case also turn up dead. Even her friends, subject to threats, desert her.

V.I., however, has a few supporters: an intrusive neighbor, her trusty dogs, a Catholic priest, a loyal doctor, and an advocate for the tortured in Latin America. The plot - which roams from a wealthy home in the suburbs to a brutal women’s prison - is enormously complicated. But Paretsky’s detail renders it nuanced and believable.

Her portrait of economic classes is as distinctly delineated as Dickens’, but without a drop of sentimentality. What makes V.I. so endearing is her adherence to her blue-collar roots and her refusal to sell out. And the plot intelligently raises issues about torture, penal and legal systems, women’s rights and the Internet.

Local journalism is essential.

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