HARD TIME

The ninth book in Sara Paretsky''s popular V.I. Warshawski series has the tough, street-savvy private investigator doing time in a women''s maximum security prison for the alleged kidnapping of a security magnate''s neglected son. She makes the most of her sentence, investigating the death of an ex-housekeeper-turned-convict, who, last seen in the prison''s infirmary, was brutally beaten and mysteriously left to die on the streets of her old neighborhood.