Windy City Blues (Thorndike Core) [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Sara Paretsky (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1996 | Series: Thorndike Core

From bestselling mystery novelist Sara Paretsky come nine stories featuring hard-nosed, soft-hearted Chicago private detective V.I. Warshawski, who finds problems and their solutions wherever she goes. "Paretsky's cult heroine is a woman's woman . . . a gumshoe for modern times".--People.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Before giving us nine tales featuring her indomitable detective, V.I. Warshawski, Paretsky provides an introduction in which she gives a tour of the industrial south side of Chicago. The piece unwittingly reveals why her novels work so well and why this short-story collection doesn't. Many readers eagerly follow V.I. across the industrial and socioeconomic terrain that Paretsky carefully details and so seamlessly integrates into her novels. But there's no room in these short tales for such marvelously extended Chicago set pieces. Instead, Paretsky has to get by largely on plotting. A Warshawski relative arrives from Italy in "Grace Notes" to find a valuable musical manuscript that once belonged to V.I.'s mother. The Warshawski family tree's tangled roots have tripped the detective up before, and they do so again here. In "Strung Out," a young female tennis star has the usual entourage of pushy parents and lovers and coaches. Suddenly, she's short one pushy parent, and V.I. is on hand to lead us to the killer in this loveless match. On the whole these stories seem slight beside the broader canvases of Warshawski novels like Blood Shot and Guardian Angel.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This collection of five short stories read by Jean Smart will charm fans of Paretsky (Blood Shot, Audio Reviews, LJ 12/93) and her fabulous creation, V.I. Warshawski. Smart reads beautifully: Warshawski's contralto voice sounds tough, intelligent, and unflagging. The beat and stress of syllables demonstrate the energetic, quick-thinking detective even when her voice fades in exhaustion or pain. The stories also give Smart room to use accents, which she does most felicitously: in "Grace Notes," V.I. meets an Italian cousin, and Smart's Italian accent is rhythmic and winsome; in "The Maltese Cat," Warshawski's Mississippi clients sound either aristocratic or redneck; hesitation and quiet mark the speech of Japanese-American protagonists in "The Takomoku Joseki." Other stories include "At the Old Swimming Hole," where V.I. witnesses a murder at a swim meet, and "The Case of the Pietro Andromache," in which Max's lover, Dr. Lotte Hershold, is accused of murder. Highly recommended for popular and mystery collections.
Juleigh Muirhead Clark, Coll. of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Va.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: G. K. Hall & Company (January 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0783815611
• ISBN-13: 978-0783815619
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,779,441 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sara Paretsky is the award-winning creator of the V I Warshawski detective novels. When Sara introduced V I in Indemnity Only in 1982, she revolutionized the mystery novel. By creating a female investigator who uses her wits as well a her fists, Sara challenged a genre in which women were traditionally either vamps or victims.

V I is the quintessential urban woman. She grew up in the shadow of the old steel mills on Chicago's Southeast side and knows her way around every alley in town. She's a street fighter, a singer, a bit of a clothes horse, and a woman of great intensity and passion.

So how much like V I is her creator? They certainly come from very different places. Sara grew up in rural Kansas where she attended a two-room school. She continues to believe the high point of her life came at the age of twelve when she was picked to play third base for the Kaw Valley District 95 baseball team.

Bleeding Kansas, Sara's 14th novel, is set in the part of the Kaw River Valley where Sara grew up.

Sara first came to Chicago in 1966 to do community service work in the same neighborhood where Martin Luther King was organizing. It was a time of fierce passions in the city and in the country as people fought over racial justice, the rights and wrongs of the war in Vietnam, and women's rights. Sara has always felt that that summer changed her life forever, and when she finished her undergraduate degree at the University of Kansas, she came back to make Chicago her home. Some of the history of that summer is recounted in her essay collection, Writing in an Age of Silence.

Like V I, Sara likes to sing, in an amateur way, has a hopeless passion for the Cubs, loves Italian shoes'and is obsessed by the search for the perfect cappuccino, so much so that she even went to cappuccino school.

In other academic ventures, Sara received a PhD in American History and an MBA from the University of Chicago. In 1976, she married physics professor Courtenay Wright. The two live in the city of Chicago with their wonder dog Callie. Their lives are made brighter by their adored granddaughter, Maia.

Sara shares V I's passion for social justice. She founded Sisters in Crime in 1986 to support women readers and writers in the mystery world. To give back to the community, Paretsky established the Sara and Two C-Dogs Foundation, which primarily supports girls and women in the arts, letters, and sciences. She has endowed several scholarships at the University of Kansas, and has mentored students in Chicago's inner city schools. She serves on the advisory boards of Literature for All of Us, a literacy group for teen moms, and Thresholds, which serves Chicago's mentally-ill homeless.

Sara has received numerous awards, including the Diamond Dagger for Lifetime achievement from the British Crime Writers Association, the Gold Dagger for best novel for her book Blacklist, and the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from several different universities. Sara's books have been translated into almost thirty languages.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Paretsky's best work, but not too bad either., December 14, 1995

By A Customer

This review is from: Windy City Blues (V.I. Warshawski Novel) (Hardcover)

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.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Ripoff/Short Stories Disguised as Novel/Stories Inane, December 1, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Windy City Blues (V.I. Warshawski Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

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.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Worth reading if you're a die-hard fan, April 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Windy City Blues (V.I. Warshawski Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

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!