Pay dirt

This isn't V. I. Warshawski's first rodeo in Lawrence, Kansas. As in Dead Land (2020), the Chicago PI travels there at the urging of her hockey player goddaughter, Bernie. Deeply shaken by a case that went brutally wrong, Vic agrees to the trip because she needs a break, but, of course, there's no rest for Paretsky's sleuth-of-conscience. When a friend of Bernie's disappears, Vic ends up searching a Civil War--era mansion outside of town, now being used as a drug house, that is stoking the local opioid crisis. The property is tied to the town's long-entrenched, viciously secretive elites, as is the alleged resort being built nearby in close proximity to a decaying coal plant. The cast assembles. There's Zöe, a young, ambitious reporter; Trig, a persistent protester; Brett, owner of the notorious house; Clarina, a woman of cloaked origins stirring up trouble over the town's assiduously hidden past; Cady, a social studies teacher fired for being woke; and a billionaire who believes he's above the law. Vic, staying in a trailer and facing escalating threats, forces herself to push through her anguish to puzzle through a many-layered case involving the theft of Civil War--era diaries from a museum library, murders, pending environmental disaster, and explosive disclosures about early Black landowners and the old house. Paretsky's phenomenal gifts for significant and riveting stories, lacerating dialogue, rich psychology, and barbed humor reach tornadic force.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Paretsky's beloved Warshawski series remains exhilarating and profoundly illuminating; count on a slew of requests for her latest triumph.

Chicago PI V.I. Warshawski hasn't been herself since one of her cases ended in tragedy. Friends persuade her to head to Kansas for a college basketball game featuring her protégée Angela. When Angela's housemate Sabrina goes missing, V.I. reluctantly agrees to help search for the young woman. With no support network in Lawrence, and the police suspicious of her motives, V.I. finally finds Sabrina almost dead in a drug den on Yancy Hill. It gets worse: the FBI shows up to question V.I. about kidnapping the girl, and the police don't believe her. When V.I. returns to the drug house, she finds the body of a woman who had been stirring up trouble in town. Now V.I. is suspected of kidnapping and murder, and she only has two junk men and an ambitious young reporter to turn to for help. As V.I. investigates the death, she finds evidence that connects the land around Yancy Hill with Lawrence's industrial future and Kansas's bloody past before the Civil War. VERDICT History buffs will appreciate Paretsky's exploration of Kansas's violent past, while V.I. fans will be eager to read the latest in the award-winning series (after Overboard).--Lesa Holstine

V.I. Warshawski, leaving Chicago to catch a basketball game in Kansas, is reminded once more that the streets of Lawrence are just as mean. As Warshawski, still reeling from the trauma of her last adventure, is at the point of heading back home, her sort-of-goddaughter Bernie Fouchard begs her to stick around long enough to track down the whereabouts of soccer player Sabrina Granev, a housemate who's gone missing. Asking enough questions to antagonize the townsfolk already roiled by the recent firing of Cady Perec, who had the temerity to teach her students about the region's historic involvement in slavery, by school board chair Brett Santich and by the news that Tulloh Industries plans to develop an oversize retail complex on Yancy Hill, Warshawski quickly tracks Sabrina, who's taken a serious drug overdose, to an abandoned house on Santich's property with an unsavory reputation, and the police whisk her off to the hospital. It would be a perfect ending if only Warshawski's acquaintance, Sgt. Deke Everard of the Lawrence PD, didn't accuse her of bringing Sabrina to the drug house herself and if his suspicions weren't redoubled by her return the next morning to the house, where she discovers the body of Clarina Coffin, an activist so meddlesome that she antagonized more people than Warshawski did. Paretsky, with her ferocious appetite for linking apparently commonplace crimes to hot-button issues present and past, roots the town's current unrest in scandals ranging from the planned development of Yancy Hill all the way back to the checkered provenance of the property. Readers who care about race, climate change, or corporate and civic responsibility will care deeply about this monster case. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.