Posted: July 30, 2022
Indemnity Only
Private investigator V.I. Warshawski is asked to look for a missing girl. As her investigation starts, Warshawski finds out that the name of the girl she has been given is wrong, the one who hired her to take on the case deceived her about his identity, and, most troublesome of all, a young man who is involved in the case ends up murdered. To make matters even worst Warshawski is told by her client to drop the investigation.
She doesn't.
At the point in the story when V.I. Warshawski seemingly has no leads, she is abducted by the mob, roughed up, and told to stay away from the case.
She doesn't.
She gets a gun instead and keeps her eyes open. And she does a ton of legwork. For example, she goes back to the scene of the crime and meticulously does a search. Twice she does an ardous "pub crawl"; doing the rounds of the local bars hoping for a lead.
It is when she attends a women's meeting at the University of Chicago that she finally gets a break. The location of the missing girl is revealed.
Before the denouement of the story there is an exciting gun fight leading into a satisfying ending.
The cast of characters sorrounding Warshawski who might continue to show up in future novels include Lotty, a kindly doctor who shelters V.I. for a time and Captain Mallory, a cop who was a friend of Warshawski's father. Mallory is very much against the concept of a female P.I but is fiercely protective of Washaswski. Also a character in the book is the city of Chicago which Paretsky talks about with great familiarity.
Very striking for me in this story is the part when the case pretty much shuts down on Warshawski simply because all the different parts of the puzzle won't fit and everything seems to be a dead end. I would have given up at this point; I think a lot of people would have given up. But V.I. Warshawski is the epitome of "bulldog tenacity" - her response is to do the grunt work. She works every single possible angle relentlessly hoping for a break. To me this is very inspiring.
"Indemnity Only" is a mystery with all the delicious aspects we have come to expect - an interesting P.I. and lots of details about her life, interesting location, engaging support characters, and a solid mystery - but it is also a handbook on how to handle problems.
Speaking of details we get a lot of great details about clothing and food and the city of Chicago, and I am happy to note that Warshawski seems to be a classical music buff - leaning towards opera. She's also interested in baseball and has a healthy libido.
The one thing that worries me is her money situation. She only got a thousand dollars from the client but her expenses here would have burned through that easy; both her apartment and office get trashed in this novel. Her original client has backed out to be replaced by a teenage girl with no money.
All in all, I wanted to know why this series is so successful and now I know. Warshawski is an engaging character and in this novel we join her as she thinks through the case and we see her sheer persistence at her work - which she obviously loves, something that I envy.
Lotty and the other side characters are ok but Ive seen more interesting ones in other mystery books. It is Warshawski that will keep me coming back.
The writing doesn't flow but it is straighforward, and, important for a mystery novel, very detailed. The mystery itself is solid. I'm not detecting any loopholes. It is my second read of this novel so I can say it is very much re-readable.