Shell Game: A V.I. Warshawski Novel

Lotty Herschel, V.I. Warshawski’s stand-in maternal figure, needs her friend’s help in MWA Grand Master Paretsky’s riveting 20th novel featuring the intrepid Chicago PI (after 2017’s Fall Out). The police are trying to pin a murder on Lotty’s Canadian-born engineering student nephew, Felix, who’s involved with Engineers in a Free State, whose members include several Middle Eastern students. In the midst of trying to gently extract information out of the recalcitrant Felix, Warshawski’s own past turns up on her door in the form of Harmony Seale, the niece of her sleazy lawyer ex-husband. Harmony wants Warshawski’s help in finding her older sister, Reno, who moved to Chicago for work but has fallen off the grid. Warshawki reluctantly tries to track down the wayward Reno and finds herself in the middle of a corporate power struggle, where rich men take what they want and young women caught in the middle bear the brunt of power grabs and worse. Paretsky isn’t one to tiptoe around injustice, and this entry proves once again that she’s one of the sharpest crime writers on the scene today. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Agency. (Oct.)