Total Recall (V. I. Warshawski)

Rating:
Summary: One marvelous book
Review: I am a very vivid reader with interests form detective story to politics, from history to genetics, from time travel to physics. I read a lot, on average 6-8 books a week. This is the BEST book I have read in a long while. It has so much history, human psychology, analytical and deduction skills and such a humane statement in it that you continue thinking about this book and characters long after you finish reading it. It might be a little slow in the beginning, but than it was much too fast for me at the end. Once you get to the first corpse, you cannot put the book down. Lotty Herschel's character is the best-written personage. It is such a vivid description of all the atrocities and horrors of WWII that made me cry many times during the book, all these people who were on top of the world a lost everything, and the reality of it happening again. It is such a psychological drama, and such a sweet sorrow with such an optimistic ending that you want to read about these characters over and over again. I am sorry to see some people give this book 1 star, they are just cold, hard, unsophisticated, and neglectful if they cannot see beauty of these book. Read it - you will enjoy it.

Rating:
Summary: Masterful Detective Story; Really Good Novel
Review: I enjoyed this book from start to finish, couldn't put it down, didn't want it to end. Why can't I give it 10 stars?

V.I. Warshawski has become a mature woman with a realistic lovelife and real friends. It was a pleasure to spend time with her (although I'm worried she's going to starve to death; she never seems to eat anything). The complex insurance and "recovered memory" scam she is "detecting" was interesting and I never doubted any of it. Plenty of blood, gore, action and surprises. As usual I enjoyed the Chicago scenery, especially the occasional notes on the Cubs.

The story of Lotty, finally revealed after all this time, makes perfect sense. I always wondered what her "problem" was, as no doubt did Paretsky. I think Paretsky handled it well, revealing it as if Lotty is telling her the story, which in the end it turns out, she is.

Why do so many people think less of a book because it's a "mystery?" This is as good a novel as many pieces of "literature" I've read, and way better than some of those lyrical and tedious first novels reviewers go nuts over.

Rating:
Summary: Where Is the Mystery?
Review: I found this latest entry in the V.I. Warshawski series oddly compelling. I really shouldn't have liked this book. This series has never really made it onto my must-read list -- maybe its V.I.'s character? Even the Chicago milieu isn't very interesting.

In Total Recal, the "myster(ies)" werent't very mysterious (there were several in this convoluted plot) and the solutions relied on a variety of coincidences. The plot was quite unbelievable. What kept me reading was the Lotty subtext. Again, there was no real mystery (A woman takes a leave of absense due to "illness" and disappears, never to speak to her lover again? -- hmmm, I wonder what that means?).

What kept me reading was to see 1) if I was right about what was going on -- I was; and 2) Lotty's story.

Rating:
Summary: A muddled read
Review: I plowed through this latest VI Warshawski book. It was hard concentrating on the story itself when I kept trying to figure out how Paretsky tied all the threads together in the first place. Lotty is brusque as usual, but this time she is also just plain miserable. Carl is miserable, Don is miserable, Calia is miserable - in fact everyone in this latest disaster is miserable. The only goodness comes from VI and Morrell, but it's not a "good" goodness. VI has changed. No more fighting, fuming, or chasing. The down-on-her-luck, tough as hell VI seems to have disappeared and has been replaced with this gentle soul who has found true love. BLAH! Couple this with the fact that we're treated to Paretsky's (and I guess VI's) political views on the Holocaust, slave reparations, and even the Taliban. I liked VI so much more before I found out she was a liberal!

Rating:
Summary: "Total Recall" is truly forgettable
Review: In Sara Paretsky's 2001 V.I. Warshawski novel, the private investigator's boyfriend tells her that she bounces all over Chicago like a deranged ping pong ball.
Listen up Sara. You're trying to tell yourself something.
In "Total Recall" Warshawski spends far too much time in the car. In fact, she seems always to be in the car. And it's not that interesting a drive.
When not scooping the Loop, Paretsky takes the reader down a tortured and twisted Nazi Germany survivor side plot that isn't very diverting and comes into 21st Century America in a very confusing fashion. But through it we learn more about V.I's physician friend Lottie.
Still, learning about Lottie at this late date is too high a price to pay when she becomes the only character in the decades-old series with any depth.
And if Sara Paretsky continues to introduce parallel plots, she'd do well to make sure that she gives V.I. as much of a life as she gives history a voice.


Rating:
Summary: If you like REAL mysteries, move on...
Review: Sara Paretsky has something in common with Dick Francis. Every one of Francis' novels is about horse racing, and something else. The other topic is something esoteric (photography, flying planes, meteorology) and the author and his wife research the second topic so that the book is interesting. Paretsky does the same thing, only with issues. One book was about the Catholic church, another about hospitals. This current one is about the Holocaust, and the ensuing lawsuits against various business entities that profited from either the Holocaust or slavery and other civil rights abuses. Paretsky's main character, female private eye V.I.Warshawski is hired to investigate the status of an insurance policy that should be paid out now, but apparently was cashed in a decade ago. The insurance company claims no knowledge of the policy's end, and are refusing to pay when the policyholder dies.

Meanwhile, Warshawski is caught up in another mystery, as an individual claiming to be a holocaust survivor shows up in Chicago. He's been to a recovered memory specialist who hypnotizes her subjects, and then gets them to remember things that happened when they were very young. Paul Radbucka remembers that he was abused, and that his father was a Nazi. He also remembers his name (he grew up with a different one) and other things that make him believe he might be related to a small group of people, one of whom is Warshawski's best friend, Dr. Lotte Herschel. We've known from previous books that Lotte was a holocaust survivor herself, but no details are ever forthcoming, because she believes in putting the past behind her. Now it's come back to haunt her, and all she wants to do is run and hide. It's up to V.I. to figure out what's going on and make sense of things.

I enjoyed this book more than I have some of Paretsky's other novels. Occasionally she gets preachy about her ideas on a particular issue, and whether I disagree with her ...or don't really care...it's annoying to spend your afternoon reading a detective novel and getting preached to. Total Recall, however, is a good book, and it doesn't seem preachy because the author doesn't seem to have much of an axe to grind. Anyway the plot is fascinating, and has at least one twist that I didn't see coming, and I enjoyed the book thoroughly.

Rating:
Summary: Good Book intended for Regulars
Review: This was my first aproach to V.I. Varshawski, not mentioning the movie years ago. Total Recall is a long book in a genre that usually rounds mysteries on 300pp (Elizabeth George an exception). Paretsky won't settle for that and sets it up for us to think we're deep into very differents plots: an insurance fraud and a disturbed outcrying holocaust derived patient harassing her friends (Paul Radbuka).

During the book I kept wondering what was wrong with V.I.'s way of treating people, everyone is, for a moment or two, against her, abusing her verbally, doubting her judgement, etc. even her friends and help (except maybe Mr. Contreras an odd character himself). It's like Paretsky likes to mount as much obstacles as possible for Vic to face.
The book has several interwoven chapters recovering the Lotty Herschel story that goes back to World War II, the Kindertransport, remorses and guilt. This chapters are great and probably the best in the book.
The thing I found a bit anoying comes from when Lotty feels, strangely treatened by Radbuka and behaves very irrationaly for hundreds of pages attacking and insulting V.I. Probably this isn't new for the V.I. frequent reader: Why does this woman stands that much abuse from a alleged friend? I assumed they were very close in other books, but Paretsky fails to convey that for the first time reader (something Sue Grafton always holds in mind). Vic says many times that she loves Lotty and so on but that didn't make it for me. Somehow Paretsky should have introduced the main characters as they show so their role, importance and oddities were understood.
If you never read a novel in this series you can find many open questions in the behavior of its characters. Its like if Paretsky is writing only for the regulars.

Not withstanding this little shortcomming, the book is engrossing. You are going to read it top to bottom (of course not in one sitting). And once you go beyond the first 100 pages a bit slow paced but I guess needed to set up the plot, and the first corpse is found, you are caught in the book. I won't spoil the book writing about a few contrived points in the resolution, but be assured I plan to read more of this series.

I couldn't say if its the best of them but it certainly is a good read.

Rating:
Summary: What Happened to V.I.?
Review: This was one of Paretsky's better mysteries with her sleuth, V. I. Warshawski. The basic premise of the book involves recent events (90's) by children of parents killed in the Holocaust attempting to get their family's money out of Swiss banks, and evidently, cash in on life insurance sold to Jewish families throughout Europe, who were frighten by the obvious anti-Semitic of Hitler and his attempts to conquer Europe. Also involved is the issue in this country of slave reparations...both of these topics entertwine with each other throughout the whole mystery. ....

As other reviewers have stated, the first hundred pages or so of setting up the plot is slightly onerous, or I would have given the book a five. Once you get past that the book reads extremely quickly. This is one book in which Warshawski ends up trying to help her mentor and friend, Lotty, who was one of the children sent to England prior to WWII to save their lives (by their families and parents). How ironic that these children often felt abandoned, when their parents were trying to do their best to save them. Yet, children do not understand the nature of the adult world, and so they create explanations that can make total sense for them.

In the midst of all this tragedy, the efforts of insurance companies to avoid paying out what they owed to these families, and the murder that tied this all together...is another side plot having to do with planted memories and whether recalled memories under psychotherapy are real or not. ... The picture drawn of this pitiable man searching for an anchor in the form of a family after spending a lifetime of abuse under the hands of a ruthless man (who also sold life insurance policies to the Jews in Europe, and African-Americans in the U.S.) is very poignant. You understand the exasperation of V. I. with this guy who was barging his way into Lotty's extended family, but also you feel for him. One of the problems with the book lay in the fact that some of the loose ends not 'solved' to my satisfaction was with this particular person. I wish Paretsky had told us more about the reality of this man's life, as well as solving the murder and Lotty's problems from the Holocaust.

Otherwise, an extremely good read!

Karen Sadler