Overboard

V.I. Warshawski, former public defender turned private investigator, is on the job again. This time her help is unsolicited: Vi’s dogs lead her to a young girl badly dehydrated, in a cave of rocks on a bank near a Chicago lake. Jane Doe is taken to a hospital and later escapes when threatened by a henchman for a shady Chicago developer. Vi tracks the girl to an old tender house near a bridge, and learns her story: her uncle has sent her grandmother, whom she lived with, to a memory care unit in a nursing home in order to sell the grandmother’s house to developers for millions. Vi has to outwit an abusive corrupt cop, and his brutal killer friend in order to rescue the young girl Julia’s grandmother, and make their world safe again. Sara Paretsky is an stellar mystery author, and is only one of four living writers to have received both the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers’ Association of Great Britain. I highly recommend her novels.