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Blacklist is the latest novel by the Crime Writer's Association's Silver Dagger Award winning author of Toxic Shock.
It's 25 years since V.I. (Victoria) Warshawski made her debut in Indemnity Only. While author Sara Paretsky may not quite have "revolutionized the mystery novel" as her biography claims, she has certainly added depth by grounding her novels more in the contemporary world than any other author. Toxic Shock won a Silver Dagger Award from The Crime Writer's Association in 1988, and in 2002 Parestky won the prestigious Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for her lifetime contribution, so perhaps such claims are not so extravagant. Blacklist is the 11th novel in the Warshawski series, and opens with V.I. skulking around the grounds of a disused mansion out in the 'wilds' of rural Illinois. "The westward drive always make me feel like I'm following the ascent into heaven, at least into capitalist heaven....the air begins to clear, and the affluence rises. By the time I reached New Solway, I was practically hydroplaning on waves of stock certificates. In the very first page, Warshawski talks about her post 9/11 feelings, and it is this fear -- leading in many of the cases to outright paranoia -- that provide the basis to two of the sub-plots to Blacklist. First, Warshawski's lover Morrell is in Afghanistan on the hunt for the news story of his life, leaving an increasingly fearful Warshawski behind to fret over him, and to wonder at times whether Morrell's pretty female colleague is anything more than that. The second sub-plot revolves around a seventeen year old Egyptian dishwasher who has been keeping the wrong sort of company by worshipping at a mosque noted for its radical rhetoric. When Warshawski is hired by regular client Darraugh Graham to investigate nocturnal lights seen flashing around the disused Larchmont Hall, his former home, Warshawski assumes -- as does her client -- that Mrs. Graham sr., simply wants attention. When she first collides with a young girl and then stumbles over the body of a dead journalist, Warshawski must quickly revise her opinion. She tracks the girl down and identifies her as the granddaughter of a publisher on whom Warshawski once interned for, and for whom she had a crush on for his firebrand leftist politics. Granddaughter Catherine has inherited her forebear's wealthy radacalism, and the reader does not need to be a genius to work out why she was lurking in the grounds. Before long, V.I. will find herself at odds not only with the F.B.I., but most of the law-enforcement agencies in Chicago and Illinois, and even with her own wealthy and powerful clients, all of whom are desperate to protect secrets dating back to the McCarthy era. But what are those secrets? Blacklist is as dense and labyrinthine as Paretsky's fans have come to expect, and as rewarding.
The copyright of the article Blacklist by Sara Paretsky in Modern American Fiction is owned by Colin Harvey. Permission to republish Blacklist by Sara Paretsky in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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