โ Scribed by Sara Paretsky
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Chicago private investigator V.I. Warshawski returns in an exceptionally well-plotted thriller that focuses attention on V.I.'s longtime friend Lotty Herschel. In a handful of chapters that punctuate the contemporary narrative, the Austrian-born physician tells her own story. More than just a device to draw the many threads of this complex novel together, Lotty's history illuminates the depth and complexity of a character that readers of Sara Paretsky's many books-- like V.I. herself--only thought they knew.
At a conference on the recovery of Holocaust assets, a man named Paul Radbuka surfaces, claiming to be part of the past that Lotty left buried in war-torn Europe half a century ago. The aging Lotty is emotionally shattered. She has never talked to V.I. about those years following her escape from Austria--her youth as an orphaned teenager in England and the brilliant medical career that ultimately brought her to America. But Radbuka's claims have such a dramatic effect on her that V.I. feels compelled to investigate him. Radbuka's early life in a concentration camp has recently come back to him, aided by the ministrations of a recovered-memory therapist. Now he's demanding that Lotty and her friend Max, another รฉmigrรฉ, acknowledge his connection to them, something neither is prepared to do. Is Radbuka really who he claims to be? And if he's the impostor Lotty says he is, why is she so terrified of him?
V.I.'s efforts to pin down Radbuka's identity dovetail with another case, that of a client with a beef against an insurance company that's trying to keep the state legislature from passing a Holocaust Asset Recovery Act. It's a little too tidy for coincidence, but since it gives Paretsky a chance to show off her knowledge of Chicago politics, the reader is delighted to accept it. While it's Lotty's voice that brings the dead to life and the past into the present, it's V.I.'s dogged perseverance and abiding affection for her friend that drive this powerful, brilliantly executed novel to a conclusion. This is one of Paretsky's strongest outings in years. --Jane Adams
Already having established herself as an inventor of the female private eye and a master of the mystery format, Paretsky skillfully expands the form to tackle several convergent themes in a moving novel of discovery and redemption. V.I. "Vic" Warshawski has a traditional mystery to solve: the life insurance policy of black factory worker Aaron Sommers had been faithfully maintained, paid for weekly even when other demands surely seemed of greater urgency. But when Aaron's widow needed to collect, the company denied the claim, saying the policy had been cashed a decade earlier. That leads Vic to Ajax Life Insurance Co. and Ralph Devereux, whom she encountered in her very first case, Indemnity Only (1982). Her investigation is subtly intertwined with another much more personal and wrenching inquiry into the appearance of a man calling himself Paul Radbuka, whose recovered memory as a child survivor of the Holocaust leads him to claim a kinship with Vic's friend Max Loewenthal. Radbuka's claim has an unexpected and drastic affect on Lotty Herschel, Vic's friend and mentor. The twin investigations allow the author to explore simultaneously the issues raised by the Illinois Holocaust Asset Recovery Act and the issue of reparations for the descendants of slaves. Dark, absorbing, probing Paretsky's novel explores the complex web of degrees of guilt and complicity surrounding the fate of Holocaust victims and survivors, with Lotty's story emerging with compelling, terrible clarity and inevitability. (Sept. 11)Forecast: With a six-figure marketing campaign and a subject of universal interest, this novel should bring in lots of new readers who will ensure a healthy run on bestseller lists.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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