Friday, November 21, 2003
By CAROL DEEGAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
"Blacklist," by Sara Paretsky (Putnam, $24.95)
V.I. Warshawski isn't your typical detective-story heroine. This Chicago private eye is a one-woman operation who works hard just to pay her bills. She is stubborn, and has a penchant for breaking the rules. But she's also tenacious.
In Sara Paretsky's "Blacklist," 11th in the series, Warshawski is hired by a longtime client to find out who might be sneaking into an empty suburban mansion at night.
When Warshawski comes across a teenage girl prowling around the property, she gives chase. After tripping and falling into an ornamental pond, Warshawski desperately grabs at the leaves and weeds that clog the surface of the water in an attempt to stay upright.
"Instead my numb fingers closed around clammy flesh. One of the dead carp. I backed away in disgust so fast I fell over again. As I righted myself, I realized it wasn't a fish I'd seized but a human hand."
And with that, Warshawski is off and running. She doggedly pursues the mystery of why a black journalist who'd been researching members of the 1930s Federal Negro Theater Project was murdered, his body dumped in the pond.
She goes where she isn't wanted, holds back information from the police and decides to hide a suspected terrorist.
"Blacklist" is a story of youth and innocence, sex and betrayal, the McCarthy era and its blacklisting process, and anti-Arab sentiments and racial stereotyping in the aftermath of Sept. 11.
Paretsky has crafted a complex, disturbing thriller, one that will linger in readers' minds.