Writing in an Age of Silence

January 15, 2007
In this brief, potent memoir, bestselling novelist Paretsky (Fire Sale
) proves as sharp and straight shooting as V.I. Warshawski, the female private investigator she's made famous in 12 novels. Carefully sketching her conjoined lives as an artist and activist who cut her political teeth on the civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s, she paints a moving portrait of herself as an engaged intellectual looking to make a substantive and life-affirming mark on society. Paretsky can be pointed in recollecting childhood influences—including Louisa May Alcott's Little Women
, and her realization that the only woman writer taught in school was named "George"—and how they play into silences faced now by writers and citizens. Paretsky is also passionate about the religious right and the Patriot Act, but her views on how the current administration treats women's sexual and reproductive freedoms are among the most powerful. "The junior Mr. Bush has given free rein to corporate venality," she asserts, " but he is adamant about controlling the sexual behavior of women both at home and abroad. Little girls, you must get Daddy's permission for what you want to do in the privacy of your bedroom." Paretsky's informed views illuminate her fiction and add dimension to discussions of the political responsibilities of the artist.

April 1, 2007
Cataloged as an autobiographical essay collection, this work develops as a conscientious objection to the new American McCarthyism. Not that Paretsky ("Blacklist"), the best-selling author of a dozen novels, lets down die-hard mystery fans. She shares the development process for V.I. Warshawski, her famous protagonist and South Side Chicago P.I., and compares Warshawski to male counterparts Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade. Paretsky offers a feminist interpretation of the loner hero's code of justice and an analysis of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett's influence on her work. Still, the finaland most politicalchapter resonates the most. A volunteer in Gage Park during Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1966 summer march and a feminist since the second wave crested, Paretsky renounces contemporary U.S. policies in a gutsy inventory of the civil rights infringements that threaten her livelihood, including unlawful search and seizure, as well as arrest and detainment, without habeas corpus. Her vocational purpose finds its best expression in her apt Alfred Tennyson epigraph: "Though much is taken, much abides." Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.Elizabeth Kennedy, Oakland, CA

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