Warshawski Takes One in the Ribs: Sara Paretsky's "Brushback"

Brushback - Sara Paretsky

As far as I know, no female detective in literature gets roughed up more often than V. I. Warshawski, and only Stephanie Plum is harder on cars. The indomitable Vic charges through concussions and multiple lacerations and contusions to complete the action in Brushback, but we could have told her it was a waste of her time…

What are the odds? Vic’s high-school boyfriend showed up on her doorstep to let her know that his mother was out of stir after a quarter of a century. Stella Guzzo had been sent up the river for killing her daughter Annie, and big brother Frank told Chicago’s gutsiest PI that mama was now claiming that she didn’t do it. Vic wasn’t interested, though, since the not-so-lovely Stella had often slandered the sainted Gabriella…


She finally consented  to a day of work for Frank, however, receiving not payment but bruises and a restraining order for her troubles. That should have been her ticket out. But when the old bitch claimed that Vic’s cousin – the late Chicago Blackhawks icon Boom-Boom Warshawski – had been the real killer, Vic couldn’t help but keep her nose in the case. Naturally, that meant tripping over dead bodies, the Ukranian Mafia, and a slew of crooked politicians (this is Chicago, after all).

Vic must save not only the reputation of her sainted cousin, however, but also the life of his goddaughter. That ought to be worth some of those lacerations and contusions, don’t you think?

Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski makes her seventeenth appearance in Brushback. Recent installments in what had been a dependable series have, regrettably, been somewhat uneven. This time, the quality is on the downswing: the premise of Vic’s current case is so unbelievable as to shatter willing suspension of disbelief. The tangled web connecting the Warshawskis to the Guzzos – after all, they were merely neighbors – is simply unfathomable. That Vic can also turn up clues to the shoddy treatment of her cop father, the late Saint Tony, while working on a case he didn't investigate is, shall we say, a “statistical improbability” – in other words, not damned likely. Why Paretsky has, for the past few books, insisted on making everything about her characters’ pasts is a bigger mystery to me than “Who killed Annie Guzzo”! As she is so often, Paretsky is at her best when it comes to creating ancillary characters such as the lawyering Levins:  a mixed-race couple in their eighties and their doughy son. There’s also a suspicious clergyman and a surfeit of typical Chicago “connected” types in the construction biz. She’s pretty unkind to young characters, however, especially the headstrong Bernie – a seventeen-year-old whirlwind who, frankly, needs a transfusion (or three) of common sense. The Mesaline twins, Viola and Sebastian, are written as just plain irritating, not that Bernie isn’t.

I’ve read every Warshawski book and liked most (except perhaps Total Recall). This one, unfortunately, will end up pretty low on my list of the series. It would probably have been better if it were not for the manner in which Paretsky had to make everything about Vic’s past. Without that forced on the reader, Brushback might well have been pretty good – but it wasn’t.