This has the trophy for my favourite series of all time I think. There were other contenders over the years but they’ve all fallen by the wayside for one reason or another. I hope VI keeps going (well, Paretsky I guess!) and the books keep being this good. 

This is a post-Covid book, and I like the way the pandemic is part of things but not the main focus. Just another thing to deal with and another way for characters to show their colours. Vic finds a teenage girl half dead on rocks on the shores of the lake and as the title suggests the plot keeps coming back to the water and the river. There’s a lot of police brutality here and, if you’ve read this series before ,you expect to uncover widescale white collar crime but when you are done with the book, without spoiling anything, it ends up being a story about family ties and family loyalties.

If I have a criticism it’s that some of the supporting cast are now getting very old and… well, actually I quite like how older people are still allowed to have personalities and useful contributions to make. And on that note, I just checked and Sara Paretsky is 75 and I think she’d be perfectly entitled to retire from writing but I selfishly hope she carries on writing. While I like the way Vic has aged, I’d love to see what an older frailer version of her would get up to.