I’m don’t remember that I thought the last couple of Warshawski books were that good but a quick look back through my website shows that I raved about them as much as ever. Much the same here. VI is possibly starting to age a bit more gracefully, not that that’s what I want her to do particularly, I’d probably be disappointed if she managed to get through a book without hospitalisation. She didn’t get there by thinking she was immortal this time - I think that counts as “aging” in her world.

This is a good plot, it took me a while to get my head in the right place to read it though. I didn’t like the device used at the beginning of the book: a bit of exciting action followed by “some time earlier”. This method of getting an interesting bit of action in the readers face before going back to the build up seems to be overused lately - maybe it’s on television I’ve seen it more than in books though. Especially since the book didn’t seem to gain anything from the device. If I know something before the characters do I want to be able to use my knowledge to see things in their situations that they don’t. There didn’t seem to be much of that here.

All in all I enjoyed the book though, I liked the story going back to the sixties and featuring Martin Luther King in it’s periphery, I liked the involvement of more of VI’s family history. I think Sara Paretsky would have to start writing complete rubbish for me to stop reading her books the minute I get hold of the hardback but I’m glad to say she’s still writing the good stuff.