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FIRE SALE
by Sara Paretsky
Hodder and Stoughton, March 2006
416 pages
12.99GBP
ISBN: 0340839082


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

In more than 15 years, Sara Paretsky hasn't written a weak book -- and she's not about to start now. FIRE SALE is simply electric.

In many ways it's more of what you expect from Paretsky. There's the tenacious heroine who bounces back like an squash ball when dented and who always battles for the underdog. She has a solid supporting cast of love interest Morrell, nosy neighbour Mr Contreras, doctor friend Lotty Herschel, tame reporter Murray Ryerson and (moderately) supportive cop Conrad Rawlings.

The books are firmly rooted in the urban jungle of Chicago. In FIRE SALE VI goes back to her own roots in South Chicago. The mills she remembers from her childhood are long gone, and the poor struggle to survive on jobs paying peanuts.

Against her better judgement she's roped in to coaching her old school basketball team. The girls are mouthy, aggressive, from poor homes and must contend with teenage pregnancies and gang warfare. But VI perseveres with them.

She's dragged deep into something far more sinister when the mother of team-member Josie asks her to look into possible sabotage at the flag-making factory where she works.

VI's questions aren't welcome, though, and before long she's flat on her back on the roadside with a piece of hot metal in her shoulder as the factory goes up in flames. And she makes herself even more unpopular when she tangles with the By-Smart empire, the main employer in the deprived area, and headed by the charmless religious tub-thumper 'Buffalo' Bill Bysen and his equally charmless family.

The America of Paretsky's books is the hidden underbelly, and one which George Bush would no doubt deny exists -- or simply ignores. Paretsky uses Marcena, the English journalist, as a device to expose it as she researches a series of features on the America not seen by the rest of the world.

Paretsky's stories, as always, reveal what people would rather not confront -- casual racism (particularly present in the Romeo and Juliet-style subplot featuring 'Buffalo' Bill's young grandson Billy), ignorance and the hypocrisy of so-called Christians.

FIRE SALE is a stark, angry and powerful book and Sara Paretsky deserves all the praise that can be heaped on her head. The crime fiction genre owes her a bigger debt than it can ever pay.

Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, March 2006

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