Official corruption and corporate crime in a small town

Cover image of "Pay Dirt," a novel about official corruption and corporate crime

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Sara Paretsky was a pioneer in portraying women in detective fiction as strong and capable. In 1982, when she published Indemnity Only, the first of the V. I. Warshawski novels, her feisty protagonist was a revelation to many readers. Her battles against crime and corruption in Chicago caught on with the public. Now V. I., or Vic to her friends, is still going strong in her twenty-second outing. Somehow, she’s only fifty now, and despite the wear and tear of forty years on the job and decades of on-again, off-again affairs, she’s much the same tough, wisecracking crime-fighter. And the dominant themes in the series remain the same: official corruption and corporate crime. But in Pay Dirt, book number twenty-two, the venue shifts from Chicago to Lawrence, Kansas. And the roots of the crime Vic uncovers lie in the town’s history, a century and a half ago.

A charming cast of supporting characters

One of the hallmarks of the novels in this series is Paretsky’s depiction of Vic’s circle of loyal friends. Nearly all of them crop up in every novel, at least in passing. Vic’s former lover, crusading journalist Murray Ryerson. The Holocaust survivor, Dr. Lotty Herschel, who ministers to her soul as well as her body. Her aging neighbor (now ninety), Mr. Contreras. Her champion hockey-player cousin, Boom-Boom Warshawski (now dead). Boom-Boom’s bothersome French-Canadian goddaughter, Bernadine Fouchard, or Bernie, also a hockey player (and now Vic’s “sort of goddaughter”). And her beloved dogs, Peppy and Mitch. Often, someone in this cast of supporting characters drags Vic into a new, usually unwanted case. And this time, in Pay Dirt, it’s Bernie, whose soccer-playing housemate Sabrina Granev, has gone missing in Lawrence.

Pay Dirt (V. I. Warshawski #22) by Sara Paretsky (2024) 400 pages ★★★★☆

Photo of downtown Lawrence, Kansas, site of this novel about official corruption and corporate crime — *Downtown Lawrence, Kansas, site of the action in this novel. Image: Lawrence Journal-World*

A typically complicated tale that challenges Vic to the limit

Now, just to give you a sense of how very complicated is the case that Sabrina’s disappearance opens up, here is Vic pondering the many people and places she has to juggle. “Sabrina. Valerie. Power Ranger. Brett Santich. Trig. Clarina. Gertrude Perec. Cady. The Wakarusa plant. The Yancy project. The Omicron boys. The Dundee House.” In fact, there are six major factors at play here. Drug-dealing. Environmental crime. Civil War-era Reconstruction violence. Billionaires breaking the law with impunity. Corrupt law-enforcement personnel. And small-town politics. This is a story that’s impossible to sketch out in a few sentences. You’ve got to read it. And if you do, you’ll be richly rewarded.

About the author

Photo of Sara Paretsky as a young woman, author of this novel about official corruption and corporate crime — *Sara Paretsky as a young woman. Image: The Creative Process*

Sara Paretsky was born in Ames, Iowa, in 1947, and grew up in Kansas. She earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Kansas, then moved to Chicago, where she did community service work. She later received three degrees from the University of Chicago: a master’s and PhD in history and an MBA from the university’s Graduate School of Business. Paretsky was married to a professor of physics there from 1970 until his death in 2018.

In addition to the twenty-two V. I. Warshawski novels, Paretsky has published three short story collections, three eBooks, and four works of nonfiction. She has won numerous awards for her work, including the Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.

I’ve read nearly all the V. I. Warshawski novels. The most recent was the twenty-first, Overboard (V. I. Warshawski finds Chicago cops running wild).