Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski series has been going on forever — or so it seems. Actually it’s been 43 years now, but that’s practically forever in the publishing world. After reading the earliest dozen or two, I started to get a little tired of the repetitiveness and the violence. But then Paretsky got her second wind as a writer — or maybe it’s really just that I got my second wind as a reader, and I cautiously returned to the series. For more up-to-date info, read my review of Dead Land (2020), or you can just go ahead and read this review of Overboard (2022).

The setting for pretty much the entire V.I. Warshawski series is present-day multi-ethnic Chicago. It’s obvious from her name that we have the Polish contingent. Italians play a big role, partly because V.I.’s late mother was Italian. There is a larger Jewish role here than in most of the other novels in the series; read the books to find out why. And of course the Irish figure prominently — think of the famous Mayors Daley. Finally, President Trump will be happy to tell you about all the crime in Chicago, which he subtly attributes to the large number of Black residents. Before I return to this book review, some relevant statistics would be in order (from the Wikipedia article “Demographics of Chicago”). If you skip them because you hate statistics, it’s your loss.

First, I want you to guess what percentage of the Chicago population is Black.

Got it?

I’m going to predict that you overestimated the Black population. The correct answer turns out to be 28.5%. Ponder that for a minute.

Now what about ethnicities? The diversity may astonish you, although I hinted at it a few paragraphs back. There’s no space here for detailed statistics, so I’ll settle for quoting a short excerpt from Wikipedia:

The main ethnic groups in Chicago include Irish, German, Italian, Mexican, Assyrian, Arab, Bangladeshi, Jews, English, Bosnian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Czech, Greek, Black, Korean, Chinese, Indian, Filipino, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Albanian, Pakistani, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Swedish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Belgian, Cuban, Vietnamese, and Puerto Rican. Chicago has a large Irish American population, with many still residing on the South Side.

Of course the already-complicated ethnic situation is further complicated by class differences and religious differences. Everyone in the book is aware of this situation, although I use the word “aware” advisedly; for instance, two of the characters in the book refer to a synagogue as a “Jewish church.”

Yes, I realize that I’m not actually telling you about the plot, the story-line. That is deliberate. I’ll tell you a little about the characters: Warshawski is a private investigator. And I should let you know that this book — every book in the whole series, in fact — is definitely not a cozy. Also that Warshawski’s nonagenarian upstairs neighbor is an important character, as are their two dogs, Peppy and Mitch. The above-mentioned ethnicities are important, but you’ll figure them out, If you don’t figure out on your own that the Litvak-Breslau family is Jewish, it’s revealed to you eventually. Perhaps most important is that Paretsky treats two major teenage characters — young teenagers at that — with realism and respect.

Have I whetted your appetite?

Categories: Books