Customer Reviews

Fire Sale (V.I. Warshawski Novels)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Sara Paretsky, along with Marcia Muller, created a subgenre in the mystery field with her series of Warshawski novels. And from the beginning, she stood apart from the rest by looking at the important issues of our time, framing them in the lives of ordinary people, while using the conventions of the genre to hook readers into compelling plots, dialogue and...suspense and action.

Like P. Schumacher, I have often compared her to Dickens because of her ability to create fabulous characters (including some terrific villains) while making complex political issues accessible to people who otherwise are turned off to politics.

In taking on the Walmartization of America, she has plenty of material. And she explores the issue from a variety of angles, including from the point of view of people forced by circumstance to be trapped in chronic underemployment. At the same time, she shows how the predatory practices of BigBox America destroys communities, including small business.
Any she does this while weaving a darn good story.

However, I would suggest the reader avoid at all costs the Brilliance Audio edition as voiced by the worst narrator working in AudioBooks today. Sandra Burr, despite the "spotlight" reviewer's opinion is totally wrong from this or any book for adults. She has no understanding of the characters or the book's subject matter, and her characterizations truly hurt the book. She is distracting when she gives a 19 year old young man the voice of a 12 year old girl....and everytime she does dialogue, my immediate impulse was to to track to down Paretsky's agent and demand she renegotiate her contract with Brilliance.

I don't know about you, but I've had some disappointments of late with some of my favorite mystery authors. Let's not name names. You know you agree with me: they're writing too many books and putting too little into them.

But not Sara Paretsky! I've been a fan for years, and the V.I. books just keep getting better. This one is well-written with a great plot line. It's a treat you owe yourself for the heat of this summer.

Private Investigator V.I. Warshawski says no when her former basketball coach at Bertha Palmer High School Ms. McFarlane asks her to take over the girl's team until she can come back to work or another volunteer surfaces. The coach reminds Victoria that basketball enabled her to get a scholarship to the U of Chicago. That fails to move Victoria, but when Coach mentions she is having cancer surgery implying she will never return Vic reluctantly takes over the sixteen girl squad that includes gang members and a center with two kids.

One of the team's stars Josie Dorrado asks Ms. Warshawski to talk with her mother who is concerned with rumors she overheard that someone is going to blow up By Smart's nearby manufacturing plant. If this happens many people including the older Dorrado will be out of work as By Smart is the biggest employee besides maybe the gangs in the depressed South Chicago. In spite of expecting nothing, Vic. goes to check out the tip when the explosion occurs. At about the same time, Josie and Billy Young, grandson of the By-Smart owner, run away. Vic hopes to find the teens before they get into trouble and also uncover who blew up the plant killing someone she knows while recovering from injuries and finally coaching teen basketball.

The who-done-it starts late, as Sara Paretsky provides her fans with an absorbing tour of Warshawski's old neighborhood. The team is delightful to follow with their fights, clichés, and camaraderie with several having unique personalities. More personal than usual, FIRE SALE is a fabulous South Chicago mystery that provides an interesting new side to V.I. that of mentoring coach. Sara Paretsky talent shines through with each book she writes.

Harriet Klausner

Able voice performer Sandra Burr gives another aces reading as she takes on the persona of dauntless private detective V. I. Warshawski. There's humor, suspense, drama and, perhaps best of all, V.I. on her old stomping grounds, the South side of Chicago.

She's returned there on a kind of errand of mercy - filling in for the coach of the girl's basketball team at her old high school. Such girls V.I. didn't see when she was in high school - high-strung, unmarried moms, a bit of a motley bunch. Nonetheless, V.I. digs in with her usual vigor and sets out to get some corporate backing for the team. First stop is By-Smart, a hugely successful discount store owned by one of her former classmates, Buffalo Bill Bysen. Seems that helping the team isn't high on Buffalo Bill's agenda. Nor, in actuality, is seeing V.I. again. That is until his son disappears.

The vanished young Bysen isn't V.I.'s only challenge - a mother of one of her team members suggests there's foul play at the factory where she works. That's an understatement because the factory soon explodes injuring V.I. and killing the owner.

As V.I.'s investigation continues she also finds an updated West Side Story only from the South Side of Chicago - Bysen's son has run away with a young Latina.

Although this is Paretsky's 12th time out with a Warshawski novel, V.I. is as fresh and appealing as ever.

Good listening for detective story fans.

- Gail Cooke

Paretsky is the master of the modern female private eye, and V.I. Warshawski set the tone for many of the female detectives who followed -- Kinsey Millhone, Sheriff Joanna Brady, etc. The latest in Paretsky's series offers readers a strong plot with vivid action scenes, and a nice mellowing of V.I.'s personality. The early books in the series were so tainted with her anger at life in general that I found them difficult to read. Now, V.I., seems to have sheared off some of her rough edges, leaving behind a lot of the "tough gal" persona that flavored the early works.

This book has many strengths, including memorable characters, much action, a strong setting, and seamless prose. However, I wonder if Paretsky is getting tired as V.I. is mellowing? The plot was a bit shaky (V.I. had a bit too much of a free pass into offices that no one would allow her to gain access to, and her reasons for becoming involved in the shady business of the South Side were tenuous at best). And many characters are thinly drawn caricatures (the Poor Little Rich Boy in love with the girl from the wrong side of the tracks, the minority mother who works hard to keep off welfare, the heartless businessmen who cry "family values" but who will do anything to stay ahead, etc.). And even many of the old standbys (Lottie, Mr. Contreras, Conrad) seemed a bit tired of their roles, just popping on stage and then off again with no emotion or involvement.

Overall, I rate this book highly because of its action and writing. But Paretsky may have to start relying on real human interaction for interest, instead of just sending V.I. on another trip to the emergency room.

Four stars for the fast-paced plot, witty and disaster-driven herione and variety of secondary characters. The setting, South Chicago is like a battle zone, not only among the characters in their every day life but also between them and society. If Warshawski hadn't originated from there, would she have taken the volunteer coaching job? Would she have investigated the fire, the use of illegals, the murders? Perhaps. I'll have to read former books of her adventures to find out if she's always so nosy and brave. As for the By-Smart monopoly - this is very time sensitive with the recent release of movies about and by Wal-Mart that proclaim Wal-Mart's faults and benefits. In Paretsky's Fire Sale, the reader is swayed by the abnoxious owners of By-Smart to root for the little people and to celebrate when she finds a way to make By-smart owners pay the insurance, find a job for a mother of four and give financial aid to the local high school. This is my first Paretsky novel and I will read more.

I absolutely love this series, and it keeps getting better and better. Ms. Paretsky is a novelist as well as a detective story writer, and her characters are great! In this book Vic is back in her old South Chicago neighbourhood. Not only does it bring back childhood memories, but she finds that some old rivalries are still fresh in some of her former acquaintenances heads. Nothing much has changed in South Chicago she finds. Vic is coaching a girls' basketball team at her old high school, and finds herself embroiled in some neighbourhood wrongdoings that put her and some of her friends in a great deal of danger. She has to deal with some of her own demons as well as she tries to unravel what's going on in South Chicago. She even gets set up against the most powerful and rich South Chicago family. One that doesn't seem to stop at new lows in order to make that almighty buck. I highly recommend this series to anyone that loves good stories written by a master hand.

Sara Paretsky's V. I. Warshawski novels may not be for everyone.

V. I. is a very prickly customer--though her abrasiveness seems warranted, given the tribulations she faces (unlike Kinsey Milhone, who is prickly merely to be prickly).

And the plots are always big sprawling affairs going in 15 directions.

But that's because Paretsky seems to want to be the Dickens of Detective Novelists. Big Plots, and also Big Themes.

This one is no exception. Paretsky takes on everything from the Third Worldization of the U.S.--sweatshop wages, obscenely rich and ruthless plutocrats--to the evil effects of fundamentalism, to Sexism Redux.

I love seeing these themes get serious treatment, but I'm not sure a detective novel can really do justice to them. There is always a tension between the Social Message and the Suspense Melodrama (just as there was in Dickens).

Anyway, as always, the novel is rattling-good fun. Exciting, fast-paced, unpredictable, loaded with interesting characters and settings.

Paretsky is one of my favorite authors, but the reader of the Brilliance Audio unabridged version spoiled Fire Sale for me. I could not in a million years imagine V.I. with such a breathy, little girl voice. Also, there are times when the reader seems to be confused as to which character is speaking dialogue and mixes up the voices. Granted, I haven't listened to much of it, but I am going to stop listening and read the book. Since I listen to audiobooks mainly while driving, I don't want to run the risk of developing "audiobook road rage" and cause a pile-up!

I've been with Paretsky since the beginning, and although the overall series is well worth reading, this is one of the weaker entries. Things finally come together in the second half, but the first half unfolds much too slowly. I'm way left of center and proud of it, but even I got tired of the liberal preaching and political stereotyping in this book. I suggest trying some of the earlier volumes in the series and hoping Paretsky gives us more plot, more believable characters and less save-the-world politicking on V.I.'s next outing.