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Late on in Sara Paretsky's BODY WORK, someone describes VI Warshawski as being like a scrappy dog who'll sink its teeth into your calf and not let go. It's a particularly apt description. VI is one of the genre's real troupers. There's none of that business of marooning her in an ageless past sans computers and mobile phones, as Sue Grafton has chosen to do with Kinsey Millhone. Instead, VI grows older and feels all her aches and pains. And 21st century America is very much the backdrop to an ageless series. Club Gouge, run by the enigmatic Olympia Koilada, is right at the centre of BODY WORK. It's where the Body Artist invites the audience to use her naked body as a canvas. The show attracts all manner of people, including a young artist, whose designs send an Iraq war veteran into a rage. VI is employed by the young man's family to clear him of murder. And against the backdrop of a freezing Chicago, VI has to deal with Eastern European gangsters, truculent artists, corrupt businessmen and a grieving family, all the time equally aided and hampered by her cousin Petra, next-door neighbour Mr Contreras and long-time friend and doctor Lotty. What she uncovers links straight back to the war in the Middle East. BODY WORK is the 14th book in a series that still radiates anger and energy. VI may be aging, but her social conscience remains as fierce as ever. The characters around her may seem like old friends, but they, too, move on and are changed by what they experience and witness. And it's a tribute, as always, to Paretsky's ability to make those characters leap off a page that I spent a fair proportion of the book muttering darkly about the deeply annoying but all too realistic Petra, who gets herself caught up with Club Gouge. Only Paretsky would get away with a bizarre 21st century avant-garde version of collecting all the suspects together in a room at the end. Her storytelling is peerless and confirms her role at the very top of the crime fiction tree. § Sharon Wheeler is a UK-based journalist, writer and lecturer.
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, April 2011
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