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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 10, No. 41 |
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A 40-year-old mystery
leads to a major scandal
of TheColumnists.com
As Private Investigator V. I. Warshawski ages into what ought to be her vintage years, it seems her cases are becoming increasingly complex and dangerous. That's nothing but good news for the fans who have followed her through a dozen of the best contemporary detective novels on the mystery scene today.
Victoria Iphegenia Warshawski was one of the very first--and in my opinion remains the best--of the hardboiled female gumshoes. Author Sara Paretsky continues to make her cases richer, deeper and ever more socially relevant, which is readily apparent in her latest--"Hardball" (Putnam, $26.95).
With the scandal that broke last year regarding the Illinois governor's office and the ripe odor of political corruption still in the air, it seems just the right time for Warshawski to start digging into a 40-year-old murder case that turns about to be directly-linked to modern Chicago politics and racist contamination of the Chicago police department.
In "Hardball," Warshawski is asked to find out what ever became of a young black man named Lamont Gadsden. He disappeared in the midst of a paralyzing snowstorm four decades earlier and hasn't been heard from since. Was he a member of the notorious Anacondas street gang? Was he involved in the murder of a black civil rights worker back then? Was the young man convicted of that murder really innocent?
These are volatile questions because they're all linked to the race riots that took place in Chicago when The Rev. Martin Luther King came there in the 1960s and was met by an enormous force of white racists bent on violence.
The more Warshawski delves into the old case, the more she realizes justice wasn't done at the time and several key figures in the police force and the political sphere may have been involved in framing an innocent man, including possibly her own now dead father, a Chicago police detective that she has venerated for her entire life.
This probe she's doing for the impoverished aunt of the missing Lamont not only isn't going to pay enough to cover her expenses, but is going to put her life at risk in very short order. The more she stirs up the old case, the more people start coming after her--among them a former cop who now runs a sophisticated security firm, another rogue cop who fears he may be dragged into any re-opening of the old murder case and a political power-broker who's afraid her investigation is going to tarnish the pure image of a current political candidate everybody assumes is future presidential material.
Into the middle of this investigation comes Warshawski's pretty young cousin, Petra, who's working on the promising candidate's campaign, but wants to help Warshawski with her investigation. Can she be trusted? Or is she being used by the sinister forces behind the old scandal to mess up Warshawski's investigation?
The ins and outs of this mystery case are fascinating. It's also a very vulnerable time in the heroine's life. She has finally decided there's no future in her long romantic relationship with a journalist who's now in Afghanistan. Divorced from her husband years ago, Warshawski is starting to look ahead to a future that doesn't look all that rosy. When her regular clients start drifting away as she gets more deeply mired in the cold case, her survival as a viable private detective even comes into question.
"Hardball" is a brisk read, loaded with actionful episodes. It also seems especially relevant today with national focus once more on Chicago's penchant for political corruption and the use of torture by the federal government on suspects still fresh in our mind.
With only Robert B. Parker and his Spenser left to keep alive the male hardboiled private eye tradition, Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski is a welcome contribution to the continuation of the female hard-boiled genre. Like Spenser, she never lets you down and "Hardball" is a must for all fans of the genre.
©2009 by Ron Miller. The book cover illustration is courtesy of Putnam. This column first posted Nov. 16, 2009.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He most recently
was the television columnist for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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