Hardball (V.I. Warshawski Series #13) »

Sara Paretsky is credited with breaking the gender barrier in detective fiction with the creation of her hard-boiled female detective, V. I. Warshawski. In mysteries that have been translated into more than 20 languages, the no-nonsense and sexy V.I. keeps her eye on the city of Chicago, distributing justice to everyone from corporate crooks to government phonies and street hustlers.

The long-awaited return of V.I. Warshawski

Chicago politics-past, present, and future-take center stage in New York Times bestselling author Sara Peretsky's complex and compelling new V.I. Warshawski novel. When Warshawski is asked to find a man who's been missing for four decades, a search that she figured would be futile becomes lethal. Old skeletons from the city's racially charged history, as well as haunting family secrets-her own and those of the elderly sisters who hired her-rise up with a vengeance.

The Barnes & Noble Review

To understand the current state of mind of both Sara Paretsky and her private detective alter ego, one must first roll back the clock to 1982, when Victoria Iphegenia Warshawski took her first investigative bow in Indemnity Only.   Both Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett had been dead for over two decades; Kenneth Millar, better known as Ross Macdonald, wouldn't succumb to Alzheimer's for another year, while John D. MacDonald had two more Travis McGee novels to publish before his 1985 death. Robert B. Parker was the king of neo-private eye fiction, his hero Spenser both homage and contemporary reworking of the Marlowe-esque knight errant in search of lost selves, with Lawrence Block, James Crumley, and Bill Pronzini not far behind in critical and commercial acclaim. The Private Eye Writers of America, an organization of established and emerging mystery writers in this still-fecund subgenre, was about to give out its very first Shamus Awards to the best books of the previous year. And the only novel featuring an American woman as gumshoe, Marcia Muller's Edwin of the Iron Shoes, had been published in 1977 to little fanfare.