SARA PARETSKY

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of bestselling US author Sarah Paretsky''s Killing Orders, starring Kathleen Turner as a feisty Chicago private eye VI Warshawski. Three million dollars in share certificates have been stolen from a Dominican priory and Vic Warshawski doesn''t want to find out why. Aunt Rosa, the priory''s treasurer, wants her on the case but Vic has never forgiven Rosa for something she did a long time ago.

The seventeenth V.I. Warshawski thriller from one of America''s greatest female crime writers, and winner of Theakstons Old Peculier Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award 2015. Twenty-five years ago, Stella Guzzo beat her daughter to death and then walked up the street to play bingo at her parish church. Chicago detective V.I. Warshawski grew up with the Guzzo family. She dated Frank Guzzo when they were teens and knew Stella''s murderous rages first-hand, so she was relieved when a judge sent Stella to prison for a long stretch. V.I. and Frank went their different ways, V.I. to university and law school, Frank to marriage, children, and a job as a truck driver. She didn''t think about the family again until the day Frank came to her office, wanting V.I. to help his mother with an exoneration claim. The detective wants no part of Stella Guzzo''s world, but she realizes how hard life has been for Frank, stuck in the gang-ridden streets around Chicago''s dead steel mills, and she doesn''t feel able to say no. V.I. starts asking questions, but the answers leave her puzzled. Was Stella''s daughter Annie the ardent girl V.I. remembers, looking for a college education as a way out of South Chicago? Or was she a calculating, amoral person, as Stella claims? And what about the lawyers Annie worked for - why did they insist on representing Stella in her murder trial? V.I.''s inquiries put her smack in the path of a notorious Mob enforcer. When she gets jumped in her old ''hood, her biggest question becomes whether she will live long enough to find the answers.

V.I. Warshawski's impossible god-daughter Bernie convinces her to look for August, a young film-maker who has disappeared. The evidence indicates that he has gone to Kansas in the company of Emerald, an older black movie actress who wants to film the story of her life. Her search takes V.I. from the military base Emerald was born on, to the farm where she grew up outside a university town, ploughing up past and present-day secrets as she goes. What is happening at the former nuclear missile site next door to the farm? What happened at the site in 1983, when students tried to stage their own version of Greenham Common? Everywhere V.I. turns she seems to be finding more trouble - with not a sign of August and Emerald. And then trouble turns to death...

Tras los atentados del 11 de septiembre, la detective V. I. Warshawski acepta un extraño encargo de uno de sus clientes más importantes: debe vigilar la antigua mansión de su madre, pues la anciana esta segura de ver luces en ella. En medio de la noche, la investigadora encuentra en los jardines de la casa el cadaver de un periodista negro. Al ver que la policia esta mas que dispuesta a dar carpetazo al asunto, la familia del difunto contrata sus servicios para que les ayude a limpiar su buen nombre. La detective se ira enredando en una telaraña hecha de lujuria, dinero, secretos ocultos y poder que se remonta a la epoca de la caza de brujas del senador McCarthy y las tristemente famosas listas negras. No solo encantara a los entusiastas de la novela negra; tambien quienes se acerquen por primera vez a este genero se veran gratamente sorprendidos y conquistados. The Times Literary Supplement

"New York Times-bestselling author Sara Paretskys brilliant protagonist V.I. Warshawski returns in another hard-hitting entry, combining razor-sharp plotting and compelling characters with a heady mix of timely political and social themes.V.I. Warshawskis closest friend in Chicago is the Viennese-born doctor Lotty Herschel, who lost most of her family in the Holocaust. Lotty escaped to London in 1939 on the Kindertransport with a childhood playmate, Kitty Saginor Binder. When Kittys daughter finds her life is in danger, she calls Lotty, who, in turn, summons V.I. to help. The daughters troubles turn out to be just the tip of an iceberg of lies, secrets, and silence, whose origins go back to the mad competition among America, Germany, Japan and England to develop the first atomic bomb. The secrets are old, but the people who continue to guard them today will not let go of them without a fight."

Victoria Warshawski es una investigadora privada que procede de los barrios del sur de Chicago, donde la inmigración, las drogas, los embarazos adolescentes y el absentismo escolar son una constante. Aquejada de cancer, la entrenadora de baloncesto del instituto donde ella estudio le pide que asuma el control del equipo femenino, y Warshawski no puede negarse. El equipo esta compuesto por adolescentes de minorias raciales, algunas de ellas con hijos, y todas procedentes de familias humildes. La mayoria de los padres de las chicas trabaja en By-Smart, una cadena de hipermercados que explota y discrimina a sus empleados.

'If Philippa Penhow hadn't gone to Bleeding Heart Square on that January day, you and perhaps everyone else might have lived happily ever after . . . ' It's 1934, and the decaying North London cul-de-sac of Bleeding Heart Square is an unlikely place of refuge for aristocratic Lydia Langstone. But as she flees her abusive marriage there is only one person she can turn to - the genteelly derelict Captain Ingleby-Lewis, currently lodging at no.7. However, unbeknown to Lydia, a dark mystery haunts 7 Bleeding Heart Square. What happened to Miss Penhow, the middle-aged spinster who owns the lodging house and who vanished four years earlier? Why is a seedy plain-clothes policeman obsessively watching the square? What is making struggling journalist Rory Wentwood so desperate to contact Miss Penhow? And why are parcels smelling of rotting meat being sent to Joseph Serridge, the last person to see Miss Penhow alive . . . ?

Chicago’s unique brand of ball is sixteen-inch slow pitch, played in leagues all over the city for more than a century. But in politics, in business, and in law enforcement, the game is hardball.

Varios hoteles se incendian en el Chicago de las muchas razas e infinitas tramas. Nadie sabe por qué. ¿Algo huele a corrupción? Victoria Warshawski, la elegante, dura y original detective protagonista de las novelas de Sara Paretsky, jamás rehúye una causa noble, sobre todo si se trata de evitar la explotación de cualquier minoría étnica y de esa gran mayoría marginada que constituyen las mujeres.

La investigadora privada V. I. Warshawski, experta en karate y tiradora mortal, es contratada por el vicepresidente de uno de los bancos más importantes de Chicago para que encuentre a la novia de su hijo Peter, misteriosamente desaparecida. Cuando le piden que abandone la investigacion, la detective se niega y halla una pista que la convierte en la principal enemiga de una peligrosa organizacion integrada por asesinos a sueldo y pistoleros sin escrupulos. Valor seguro es un thriller habil y refrescante, una inteligente combinacion de humor acido y suspense. Sara Paretsky, una de las escritoras de best-sellers de mayor exito de Estados Unidos, consigue atrapar al lector con un estilo agil y eficaz y una protagonista sencillamente irresistible.

La detective Victoria Warshawski, mujer independiente, solitaria, aparentemente dura e incapaz de ordenar su vida doméstica y sentimental, vuelve a hacerse cargo de la causa de los desheredados encarnada en dos de sus vecinos: una anciana que vive sola con sus perros y cuya presencia incomoda a los nuevos residentes del barrio y el entrañable señor Contreras, que le pide su ayuda para localizar a un antiguo compañero de trabajo desaparecido cuando hacia averiguaciones sobre las condiciones de jubilacion de la empresa en la que ambos trabajaban. En esta doble actividad, Warshawski se asomara a la problematica de los ancianos en una sociedad despiadada que no duda en aprovecharse de sus miembros mas desfavorecidos.

Chicagos unique brand of ball is sixteen-inch slow pitch, played in leagues all over the city for more than a century. But in politics, in business, and in law enforcement, the game is hardball. Sara Paretsky is the author of thirteen previous books, including eleven V. I. Warshawski novels. She is the winner of many awards, including the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement from the British Crime Writers' Association.