Critical Mass
Sara Paretsky
2013, 465
Fiction
V.I. Warshawski (Victoria Iphigenia, a.k.a. Vic) is a Chicago private eye of Polish/Italian descent. In Paretsky’s seventeenth book, Vic’s best friend, Lotty, an elderly Austrian-born doctor whose family died in the Holocaust, asks her to look into what has happened to Judy, the drug-addicted daughter of her childhood playmate, Kitty. After tracking Judy to a rural meth house where she’s nowhere to be found and discovering the body of a drug dealer, Vic goes to Kitty for more information and discovers that Judy’s son, Martin, who Kitty raised, has also gone missing. Kitty hires Vic to find Martin. What follows is a convoluted story that moves from women physicists in pre-war Austria to present-day Metargon, the computer company where Martin worked and whose founder worked on the Manhattan Project and was most noted for designing a breakthrough computer in the 1950s. All the major characters have secrets, lies and silences that Vic must break through to finally solve all the puzzles. A hard-hitting, complicated story that will keep you fully engaged.
Paretsky is credited with transforming the mystery world through the creation of her female private eye in Indemnity Only in 1982. If you like Sue Grafton, J. A. Jance, Nevada Barr or Val McDermid mysteries, give Paretsky a try and learn a little something about Chicago along the way.
For further information about the library, please go to our website at concordpubliclibrary.net.
