Customer Reviews

Windy City Blues

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The stories in "Windy City Blues," written throughout Ms.
Paretsky's career as a novelist, are not up to her usual
standard, but they are entertaining enough to be worth
reading. It has been long enough since a new V.I. Warshawski
novel was published (the last was "Tunnel Vision," 1994)
that it just feels good to see these familiar characters again.
But don't expect complicated plots: none of these mysteries
taxes Vic's estimable deductive skill much.

The only clue on the front cover of this book that it is
not a V.I. Warshwski novel is a single line reading
"V.I. Warshawski Stories." Discovering that I'd paid $7.00
for short stories rather than a novel was a disappointment,
and as I started the book, I discovered that the publisher
had double spaced the text to make it appear that
this was a normal length book. However, the biggest
disappointments were the stories themselves.

In the story entitled "The Pietro Andromache," the author
stoops to gathering all of the suspects together in a room
and cleverly solving the mystery! Adult characters in this
awful story actually utter the lines "Yowie! Zowie! Powie!"
and "Pooper snooper, pooper snooper." This is one of the
most inane stories I've read in years!

I have been a fan of this author for a long time, and
have read all of the previous books in this series. This
time I feel ripped off. I will probably not buy more books
by this author.

Had Windy City Blues been the first V.I. Warshawski volume I'd read, I may have been disappointed. As it was, the characters were familiar, and I enjoyed the new format (even though I hope Ms. Paretsky sticks to V.I. novels in the future). The author owes her readers nothing, and is entitled to experiment with her popular character. If this is the first time you've read a V.I. Warshawski mystery, by all means, read the others!

The author states in the beginning of the book that this is a collection of stories where she was trying to answer a question and it did not merit an entire novel. She should have kept these "answers" to herself. The stories are too short to even tell a good tale. There is no character development, everyone is one-dimensional. If you did not know V.I. Warshawski before reading this book, you wouldn't know her after this book either. All the stories totally lack the real V.I. and I can't pick a single one that was worth reading. If you are a die-hard fan of V.I. and must read this book, get it from the library.

Though I usually do not like to read short stories, these short stories are good. They are good in part due to the character in them, V.I. Warshawski. She is the glue that holds them together and creates our interest in seeing what she has gotten herself into again and again. A great read.

J. Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the 'Isms'"

This 10th V.I. Warshawski book is a collection of short stories. Some of the other characters and friends take more of a role in these stories.

In "Grace Notes", V.I. meets an Italian cousin that may want to meet family and may want something else. In "Pietro Andromache", Dr. Lotte Hershold, VI's old friend is accused of murder over an old, sentimental artifact. "At the Swimming Hole" has VI helping an old friend at a swim meet, where she witnesses a murder. In "The Takamoku Joseki" VI had to reason through a traditional game who murdered a Japanese-American neighbor. Although this is a very different format, Paretski does a good job of developing her stories in a quick manner. I still like the novel format best!