Female detective "Vic" Warshawski suspects malpractice when a close friend dies in a hospital emergency room. Unfortunately her investigations seems to ignite a chain of nasty reactions.

When Chicago private eye V.I. Warshawski investigates a fire at a SRO hotel that leaves her aunt homeless, she becomes embroiled in a tangle of political corruption, arson, and murder.

V.I. Warshawski, a private investigator, is up against corrupt politicians, big government, political coverups, and the idle rich when she tries to solve the case of her community activist friend's murder.

He came from out of the blue -- a man with an astonishing story of a childhood shattered by the Holocaust, and it's a story that has devastating consequences for V.I. Warshawski's cherished friend, Dr. Lotty Herschel, too. For now, the past that Lotty has struggled to forget has come back to haunt her, flooding her with memories that could destroy her life. And for V.I., who's already working on a case for a poor family cheated out of their life insurance,...

V.I. Warshawski may have left her old South Chicago neighborhood, but she learns that she cannot escape it. When V.I. takes over coaching duties of the girls' basketball team at her former high school, she faces an ill-equipped, ragtag group of gangbangers, fundamentalists, and teenage moms who inevitably draw the detective into their family woes.

The enigmatic performer known as the Body Artist takes the stage at Chicago's Club Gouge and allows her audience to use her naked body as a canvas for their impromptu illustrations. V. I. Warshawski watches as people step forward, some meek, some bold, to make their mark. The evening takes a strange turn when one woman's sketch triggers a violent outburst from a man at a nearby table. Quickly subdued, the man-an Iraqi war vet-leaves the club. Days...

"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,...

V.I. Warshawski's impossible god-daughter Bernie convinces her to look for August, a young film-maker who has disappeared. The evidence indicates that he has gone to Kansas in the company of Emerald, an older black movie actress who wants to film the story of her life. Her search takes V.I. from the military base Emerald was born on, to the farm where she grew up outside a university town, ploughing up past and present-day secrets as she goes. What...

"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...

While visiting Angela, one her protégées in Kansas, V.I. Warshawski, when Angela's roommate goes missing and V.I. finds her near death in a drug house, is pitched headlong into the country's opioid crisis and a local land-use battle with roots going back to the Civil War.