Rating: 
Summary: Blacklist this one....
Review: Sara and V.I. need to take a long break. This was a plodding, boring, confused attempt to write a "socially relevant" novel. It takes a particular skill to blend genres successfully and this was not an example of a book that succeeded. Fortunately it was borrowed so the only thing I spent poorly was time.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good, albeit slightly polemical, Warshawski
Review: Sara Paretsky is an excellent writer and this latest in the V.I. Warshawski series is a worthy contribution. It has to be looked at on two levels, however, as many of the previous reviewers have done. Along with a number of other popular writers Paretsky has a strong philosophical persuasion and uses her bully pulpit to express it. Whereas Clancy, Cussler, Marcinko and several others are conservative cheerleaders, V.I.'s creator is unabashedly liberal, and in Blacklist she takes on the Ashcroft Justice Deparment and the Patriot Act with gusto, relating it back to the days of the HUAC blacklist of the 50's.This book is carefully plotted, bouncing back and forth between a current murder and events of 50 years previously. The characters are well defined and the milieu rich, although there are perhaps a few too many characters and one begins to lose track after a while. However, the book is well-paced, and the mystery satisfyingly complex, so that most Paretsky fans will enjoy it provided that their personal political beliefs don't get in the way.
Rating: 
Summary: Gotta Get Beyond the Cold
Review: Sara Paretsky's skill as a writer surfaces through her ability to create strong empathy between reader and character. This is no more evident than by the events of Chapter 4. Our favorite character, V.I. Warshawski, catches cold pulling a dead man out of a pound. As she drags fanny, so does the reader. But when our investigator returns to form, the intensity of the plot follows suit, eventually clipping along at a pace that kept this reader turning pages well into the wee hours of the morning. By the end of the story, no character is left dangling. The reader knows the who, what, and why. However, nagging thoughts persist about how our lives fit in a country fraught by paranoia.
As V.I. goes about her business of investigating, she is - indeed - a mellower private eye, using clever interrogation skills, rather than "lip," to drag answers from the unsuspecting instead of alienating them. I like this deeper Warshawski. On the other hand, V.I. remains true to form by going where her case leads her, deliberately shoving aside warnings to "back off" despite threat to body and business.
The author uses "the case" to explore the darker sides of Homeland Security and the power of the ultra-wealthy. V.I., herself, becomes the target of over-jealous protectors of the homeland, and the reader is reminded of just how easy it is for very real civil liberties to be trampled. Readers are also exposed to the inworkings of high-society, and how *different* they think and operate from the rest of society.
I applaud this book. It takes the reader places that few would imagine when seeking to be entertained by the familiar antics of our beloved V.I. Warshawski. "Blacklist" not only entertains, but makes the reader look at our country in the wake of 9/11.
Rating: 
Summary: preachy
Review: That's it - preachy. I don't read mysteries to get my politics - I read political and historical books for that - this book was just terrible. I wish I could return this book and I hope others just do not order it. Buy another book for a good mystery and then look for whatever you like in Pol/Sc/Hist.
Rating:
Summary: 12th installment, and I¿m not tired of this broad
Review: The first Paretsky book I read, I knew I was going to have to read all of them. And I have, and I'm still not tired of this V. I. Warshawski broad, Chicago private eye.
Blacklist deals with the long-term effects of discrimination and guilt. A friend of Vic's (V. I.) asks her to investigate possible trespassing in the family mansion where she grew up. Here's a good scene: on her first foray into the property in years, she stumbles into a cruddy pond and comes up holding hands with some dead guy. Turns out he's a black journalist writing about stuff from the 30s. Things get deeper and murkier when the man's sister asks Warshawski to investigate the murder.
I get the feeling that Paretski has done some fantastic research in the writing of this book, as the content spans cultures, generations, and politics over 70 yrs as she proves that prejudice is alive and well in our world.
No big surprise there, but she does it so very, very well.
Rating:
Summary: BLACKLIST is Sara Paretsky¿s best tale in several years
Review: The impact of 9/11 even in the heartland continues to have impact on residents. While her lover writer is in the Afghanistan or is that the Ubekistan area, private investigator V.I. Warshawski agrees to accept a strange case, at least from this particular client, longtime corporate customer Darraugh Graham. His ninety-year-old mother insists that she has seen lights looking out from her room in a nursing home from inside the nearby abandoned Larchmont Hall. V.I. goes to the deserted building anticipating running into either homeless or teens, but instead finds the corpse of T-Square magazine reporter, Marc Whitby. Apparently, he was investigating 1950s dancer Kylie Ballantine, a victim of Olin Taverner's witch-hunt. The county declares Marc killed himself, but his wife Harriet hires her because she wonders if government officials murdered him. V.I. accepts the case though the FBI and local law enforcement want her to step back because they are investigating a case involving a possible terrorist that might have a bearing
on the reporter's death. BLACKLIST is Sara Paretsky's best tale in several years as the author effortlessly brings out the caring side of her sleuth without diminishing the strength of V. I. All that is placed inside a political thriller wrapped around a fast-paced who-done-it. This well written exquisitely exciting hooks the reader while also providing a warning message that the witch hunts of Salem and McCarthy are not isolated aberrations. They are a consistent part of history (same sh*t just after WW I) especially when people allow the flag and "security" to warp freedoms. After a dozen or so books, Warshawsky hopefully has more adventures like this one that is if she can avoid vanishing in front of a military tribunal. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: Best Story Yet
Review: These days most mysteries barely break 300 pages with large type and plenty of border spacing. This 415 page newest of VI's life and times is extremely well written and compels me on many levels to stay up way past bedtime reading just one more chapter. I am very much enjoying finding out about the Federal Negro Theatre Project and will look into that aspect of Black history more.
Rather than a murder in every chapter as seems the genre rule these days, we are kept interested by detail and characters that are complex and a multi-layered plot. I most especially enjoy VI's comebacks to authority figures and her no nonsense approach to the police. Highly rec'd this book.
Rating:
Summary: Secrets, Secrets, Secrets!
Review: This book is full of secrets and betrayals, and VI gets caught up in the middle of a conspiracy that actuallly began 50 years previously. It's been a couple of years since we've heard from V.I., and things have happened in her world - the World Trade Centre, threats of terrorism and Homeland Security, and the love of her life - Morrell has been over in Afghanistan doing wartime reporting. Although Vic misses him terribly, she's trying hard not to look like a clinging female, and continues to pursue her own career in Chicago. She is still chasing bad guys and risking her life trying to uphold law and order. She is asked by one of her more well-heeled clients to determine who has been using his family anscestral home. Although the mansion is supposedly empty, this client's elderly mother still sees lights on inside the building late at night. Looks fairly straightforward until V.I. accidentally falls into the old ornamental pool on the grounds and discovers a dead man. Then she is whirled into a maelsrtom of intrigue, secrets, Communist plots and racism that almost causes her to lose her own life. Paretsky writes a great yarn, and her characters are the most three-dimensional you'll see in this genre. She is without peer in the mystery writing field! Awesome book!
Rating:
Summary: Riveting and relevant
Review: This is a book you will be thinking about long after you turn the last page. The plotline was riveting, and the way current events are woven into the unfolding mystery is both interesting and disturbing. I can't wait to read Paretsky's next book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not too Bad- but Not Satisfying Either
Review: This is my first VI Warshawski novel. I am quite impressed by Paretsky's writing ability, and enjoyed the book mainly because I think she possesses a great command of the English language. I'm also a sucker for any book involving spooky houses which is why I bought this in the first place.
The story itself was a disappointment. The pace is way too sluggish and the ending is unsatisfying. I think that someone who publishes such a long novel should at least reward their readers with a whopper of an ending, which this one fails to deliver. The characters are dry, and I did not find myself empathizing with any of them. I wasn't as troubled by the writer's political rants as other reviewers were, because at one point in the story Warshawski comes out and admits she is a hot-head who lets emotions come before logic (which sort of puts all her political opinions into perspective doesn't it?).
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