Rating: 
Summary: A Blood Shot in the arm for oppressed sisters everywhere!
Review: "I would not be turned into a eunuch, be driven into living my life on the margins designed by someone else's will." What has worked for Paretsky in Toxic Shock is the simultaneous rejection or minimization of typical features of the hard-boiled genre and the explicit use of some essential elements of feminism. These changes are evident in characterisation, plot development, and ambience. Unlike the preferred male private dick of the genre, V.I. Warshawski of Toxic Shock is neither a loner nor a cynic . She forms strong emotional bonds, makes friends, worries about people toward whom she has no professional obligations. She also displays a wide range of emotional behaviour: notably, introspection, guilt, self awareness, and uncertainty. The result is that V.I. is a three dimensional figure karate chopping out of the page. Paretsky's foregrounding of gender also leads to an active questioning of patriarchist assumptions, the reader is urged by the text to solve not only the problem of the crime but also the problems of the male dominated social system. V.I. fights back against patriarcal hegemony like her life depends on it...and it ofetn does, "I stood over him panting with fury, my gun in my barrel-fist, ready to smash into him if he started to get up. His face was glazed - none of his womenfolk had ever fought back against him." But our heroine also finds time to party like there's no tomorrow, "I called up an old friend and spent a pleasant evening on Lincoln Avenue. The blister on my left heel didn't stop my dancing until past midnight." V.I. Warshawski - A Blood Shot in the arm for oppressed sisters everywhere!
Rating: 
Summary: V.I. Warshawski in Toxic Waste
Review: It's always a bit suspicious when a fiction writer prefaces her novel with acknowledgements for help on "a project that includes much technical material," as Sara Paretsky does before beginning "Blood Shot." After all, one needn't be a car mechanic to write about a car chase, or a doctor to describe a hospital. And as such research is supposed to indicate that the writer really knows her stuff, suspicion is only increased when the opening chapter begins with V.I. Warshawski, our heroine, going back to her old high school which she led to the state high school basketball championship while being named MVP of the tournament before going on to the University of Chicago on a basketball scholarship. But (1) the descriptions of playing basketball make it embarrassingly obvious that the writer knows very little about basketball; (2) the University of Chicago does not give athletic scholarships; (3) Warshawski claims that she is 5'8" and dunked regularly in basketball games. A 5'8" man who can dunk is a prodigious jumper; a 5'8" white man who can dunk is a phenomenal jumper. I would bet large quantities of cash, stocks, bonds, or offspring that there are no 5'8" white women in America who can dunk. This may seem nitpicking, but if this is how she handles common-knowledge material, can we really trust her with "much technical material"? Fortunately for us, the "technical material" involves some basic chemistry and little else. This is not to say that "Blood Shot" is entirely without its merits. In fact, it is one of those rare works of art which makes a significant contribution to the genre by virtue of its sheer unmitigated awfulness. Those of us who find, for example, Robert B. Parker's "Spenser" novels irritating and derivative are forced to reconsider in light of this: true, his plots are phenomenally uninteresting, but Parker's characters have a realness about them, he doesn't pad, he is truly funny, and he writes good dialogue. Consider, by comparison, this typical attempt at crackling repartee: "My, my, you're certainly a sight. Looks like you're been wading through a mud puddle that came up to your waist." "Yeah, I've been down in the South Chicago swamp." "Oh yeah? Didn't even know there was a South Chicago swamp." "Well there is." Most chapters begin with a pointless rehash of everything (and I mean everything) that happened in the previous chapter, followed by discussion of what she has for breakfast, what clothes she's wearing, and precisely how dirty they are when she gets home. There are smiles galore, from 'wry' and 'unhappy little,' to 'nervous' and 'engaging,' all on the faces of sturdy ethnic blue-collar Chicagoans who, despite years and years of silent stoic suffering, will -- for some unexplained reason -- tell our heroine anything she wants to know after fifteen seconds of verbal bullying. Then there's the plot, involving a soup of toxic waste poisoning people. It must be admitted that true ecological awareness was shown in the construction of the plot: if it was a cliche in bad 70's cops and robbers TV, it's a good bet it's been recycled here. Think maybe Big Business is bad? Think maybe politicians are crooked? Or that the plot includes: (a) crusading public interest lawyer; (b) anonymous phone calls warning our heroine to stop working on the case; (c) well-meaning friends telling our heroine to stop working on the case because it's too dangerous; (d) detective's refusal to heed warnings because this is A Personal Thing now; (e) attack, beating, and leaving for dead of detective; (f) detective not being dead, despite Forces of Evil's 100% success rate elsewhere; (g) conversations with the pet; (h) the obligatory vice -- in this case a liking for whiskey; (i) the obligatory virtue -- in this case the morning run; (j) heroine annoying local D.A.; (k) break-in and ransacking of apartments; and (l) (all together now) climactic final showdown involving guns and violence and the restoration of moral balance in the world? This final scene is worth describing in detail for its unintentional hilarity, though there are constraints here. Suffice it to say that the Forces of Evil act as strangely and as stupidly as the villains in the old "Batman" TV series who never think to simply shoot Batman and Robin, and that Warshawski is able to save the day with the aid of an 80 year old woman who demonstrates enough physical agility to suggest that maybe she, like Warshawski, can dunk.
Rating:
Summary: A provocative and compelling mystery
Review: Published in Australia under the title, Toxic Shock, this novel shows that Sara Paretsky is getting better every time she puts pen to paper.
V. I. is forced to confront the past she thought she'd escaped when a cry for help from an old friend takes her back to Chicago's South Side. In an industrial wasteland of chemical plants and toxic swamps, she must unravel a mystery more than 30 years old, defeat a financial giant and take revenge for an outrageous crime against the people she grew up with, while reliving her memories of childhood.
The truth is hard to find, and harder to believe, but with the unwitting aid of friends, old and new, she does deliver - as does Paretsky, whose writing is crisp and powerful, with multi-dimensional characters and a rivetting, unpredictable plot.
A provocative and compelling mystery from the First Lady of Crime Fiction.
Rating:
Summary: A provocative and compelling mystery
Review: Published in Australia under the title, Toxic Shock, this novel shows that Sara Paretsky is getting better every time she puts pen to paper.V. I. is forced to confront the past she thought she'd escaped when a cry for help from an old friend takes her back to Chicago's South Side. In an industrial wasteland of chemical plants and toxic swamps, she must unravel a mystery more than 30 years old, defeat a financial giant and take revenge for an outrageous crime against the people she grew up with, while reliving her memories of childhood.The truth is hard to find, and harder to believe, but with the unwitting aid of friends, old and new, she does deliver - as does Paretsky, whose writing is crisp and powerful, with multi-dimensional characters and a rivetting, unpredictable plot. A provocative and compelling mystery from the First Lady of Crime Fiction.
Rating: 
Summary: Blood Shot is another example of Paretsky's honesty
Review: Sara Paretsky's writing has its faults and its biases, but I enjoy her Warshawski novels for their honesty, the uniqueness of her detective, and the warmth of some of her characters, like the older neighbor Sal Contreras. I don't think V.I. is in the least like Kinsey Milhone, in fact, she is more like Sam Spade, and I appreciate her for it. The Warshawski novels get progressively better, with Killing Orders as the worst, for its hints of bigotry, and Guardian Angel as the best, for its humanity. Deadlock is another favorite of mine, for the characters and the tremendous writing of the shipping business and the shipping catastrophe. V.I. is unique, and I cannot get enough of her.
Rating: 
Summary: Something Missing
Review: This is a South Chicago story and probably has more impact if you've lived there. Her business as a private eye helped V. I. Warshawski to escape from the `hood, but she feels ensnared again when a childhood friend's appeal for help draws her obsessively back to investigate her friend's unknown paternity. The quest for the friend's father, the murder of a high school friend, and other threads put her on the trail of powerful and ruthless men, who make her their next target. This story borders on being very good. The detective work and suspense are good but not particularly memorable. I have the feeling that V. I. is intended to be a character of some depth, but something was missing in the recorded book version, read by Donada Peters. V. I. seemed reckless, rather than tough. Maybe I expected Kathleen Turner.
Rating:
Summary: Something Missing
Review: This is a South Chicago story and probably has more impact if you've lived there. Her business as a private eye helped V. I. Warshawski to escape from the 'hood, but she feels ensnared again when a childhood friend's appeal for help draws her obsessively back to investigate her friend's unknown paternity. The quest for the friend's father, the murder of a high school friend, and other threads put her on the trail of powerful and ruthless men, who make her their next target. This story borders on being very good. The detective work and suspense are good but not particularly memorable. I have the feeling that V. I. is intended to be a character of some depth, but something was missing in the recorded book version, read by Donada Peters. V. I. seemed reckless, rather than tough. Maybe I expected Kathleen Turner.
Rating: 
Summary: Basic cliche ridden detective novel
Review: This is your basic private detective story. All the cliches are here. Getting involved with the old neighborhood, the old aquaintance being murdered, the rich guy that tries to buy off the PI, the PI is always broke, organized crime and crooked politicians, the PI getting beat up, the gun battle in the end and a few threads left hanging. Alot of the "mysteries" are fairly obvious and you know who will be killed but there are some twists in the end. The story does move along and rarely drags. But it is never exciting enough where you can't put the book down. And it never pulls you into the PI's world. The writing style is a poor imitation of other detective novels. The novelty of the book is that the PI is a woman. But the way the book is written, it doesn't really add anything to the story. The PI could have been anyone. I didn't hate the book but I would never buy another by the author.
Rating:
Summary: Basic cliche ridden detective novel
Review: This is your basic private detective story. All the cliches are here. Getting involved with the old neighborhood, the old aquaintance being murdered, the rich guy that tries to buy off the PI, the PI is always broke, organized crime and crooked politicians, the PI getting beat up, the gun battle in the end and a few threads left hanging. Alot of the "mysteries" are fairly obvious and you know who will be killed but there are some twists in the end. The story does move along and rarely drags. But it is never exciting enough where you can't put the book down. And it never pulls you into the PI's world. The writing style is a poor imitation of other detective novels. The novelty of the book is that the PI is a woman. But the way the book is written, it doesn't really add anything to the story. The PI could have been anyone. I didn't hate the book but I would never buy another by the author.
Rating:
Summary: An exciting intro to VI
Review: This was the first VI Warshawski book I ever read, and it did an excellent job of whetting my appetite for more. I think Paretsky did an excellent job of drawing me into VI's world, which is rich with unique characters. VI comes across as individualistic and principled, and I like how Paretsky resisted cliché temptation on several counts: the complex issue of chemical responsibility is not wrapped up in a tidy bundle by the end of the book, and there is no "obligatory sex scene." Not that sex scenes don't have their places, but I just hate it when I'm reading along and I can almost hear the agent say, "Okay, author, you need to steam this up a bit right here if you want to sell this book." In this story, VI is all business, which is a delightful change of pace.
|
