Club Gouge: Chicago’s edgiest night spot, where a woman calling herself the Body Artist invites the audience to use her naked body as a canvas.
The show attracts all kinds of people, from a menacing cop to Ukrainian mobsters and Iraq war veterans. A tormented young painter comes too, and the designs she creates on the Body Artist drive one of the soldiers into a violent rage.
When the painter is shot, the police assume the shell-shocked veteran went off the rails. But his family hires V.I. to clear his name – and the detective discovers a chain of ugly truths stretching from Iraq to Chicago’s South Side.
The show attracts all kinds of people, from a menacing cop to Ukrainian mobsters and Iraq war veterans. A tormented young painter comes too, and the designs she creates on the Body Artist drive one of the soldiers into a violent rage.
When the painter is shot, the police assume the shell-shocked veteran went off the rails. But his family hires V.I. to clear his name – and the detective discovers a chain of ugly truths stretching from Iraq to Chicago’s South Side.
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Reviews
One of the most memorable novels in Paretsky's fine series.
Paretsky has been putting her private investigator through her paces since 1982, changing perceptions of women in crime fiction through the creation of a fiercely independent female detective. She keeps her brand of politicised noir fresh by responding to issues - social, cultural and political as well as gender - in contemporary life . . . Tackling the politics of the Iraq War and ideologies of corporate greed where the human body is devalued, Paretsky is firing on all cylinders
This is the 14th case for the feminist gumshoe and it has all the hallmarks and energy of its predecessors.
With the creation of V.I. Warshawski, Sara Paretsky did more than anyone to change the face of contemporary women's fiction.
Very readable
Paretsky's writing captures the essence of her beguiling heroine: Victoria Iphigenia is as tough as nails with a soft spot for justice that just won't quit.