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V.I. Warshawski

kevinburtonsmith

Created by Sara Paretsky
(1947–)

“Never tell anybody anything unless you’re going to get something better in return.”
— V.I. Warshawski in Deadlock

“Like Lew Archer before her, (V.I.) looks beyond the surface to ‘the farside of the dollar,’ the side where power and money corrupt people into making criminal decisions to preserve their positions.”
— Parestky on V.I.

Along with Sue Grafton’s  Kinsey Millhone, with whom she’ll probably always be linked (and Lord, how it must annoy both authors), one of the best known of the tsunami of lady dicks who popped up in the late seventies/early eighties was V.I. WARSHAWSKI, a Chicago private eye specializing in corporate skullduggery.

V.I. is very proud of her Italian-Polish roots and her working class background, and seems to take particular delight in going after fat cats. She’s got an office in the Loop, complete with the El rattling past every few minutes.

And while she may be a slender 5’8.” V.I. can certainly take care of herself, thanks. No waiting to be rescued here — she packs a gun in her purse, and she’ll use it if she has to. She’ll duke it up if necessary, and she doesn’t take any bullshit — especially from men. She’s fiercely and defiantly feminist, and if many of her cases revolve around “women’s issues,” well, so be it.

But V.I.’s not just some rhetoric-spouting idealist. She lives in the real world and that’s the way she wants it. She drinks Johnnie Walker Black Label, is more than willing to bend the rules for her clients (she seems particularly partial to B&E), but she’s also a bit of a clothes horse, likes to sing along with the radio, and isn’t adverse to a little sex now and then. She’s committed, principled, and uncompromising, and a very welcome addition to the ranks of the genre.

V.I. has proven to be one of the most popular and influential, and certainly one of the hardest (and hardest working) of the modern eyes. V.I.’s politics are straight up, and she remains determined and committed. So determined and committed that she can occasionally come off as “unapologetically strident,” as The New York Times once put it.

But that comes with the territory. To paraphrase Chandler, “Down these mean streets a woman must go who is not herself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. She is the hero; she is everything. She must be a complete woman and a common woman and yet an unusual woman. She must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a woman of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. She must be the best woman in his world and a good enough woman for any world.”

It’s that same unflinching quality and sense of uncompromising resolve that may have helped attract the attention of actress and Paretsky fan Kathleen Turner, who used her box office clout to get a big budget film produced. Unfortunately the result, 1991’s V.I. Warshawski, was a sloppy, disappointing mess; ruined by a bunch of lazy clichés and a cobbled-together and misguided potboiler plot. Nor did it help that Turner, despite all her good intentions, was simply miscast. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve always pictured V.I. as rather tight and focussed, and more than a little frosty. Turner’s just a big, warm comfy femme fatale wannabe in the film, with hair about two sizes too big — presumably to make her more audience-friendly. And don’t even get me started on the cute kid and the dog the studio saddled her with.

Because if there’s one thing V.I. has never been accused of, it’s being “audience-friendly.” Or, God forbid, perky. Or spunky. Trying to recast her as Mary Tyler Moore, the film was just begging to fail. And sexy? On the other hand, selling the rights to Hollywood did allow Paretsky to quit her day job and start writing full-time, for which all us mystery readers should be eternally grateful.

Let’s face it — V.I. can be abrasive. And I’m with her when it comes to politics. Her attempts to seem hip or cool often land awkwardly — as when she uses words like “chill” or name drops pop culture, she just reinforces how out of it she seems. But the same traits that rub me the wrong way if she were a real person ironically make her far more interesting and compelling as a fictional character. She’s about as unapologetically in-your-face as series private eyes come these days. I mean, it’s not coincidence that several people have drawn parallels between V.I. and the equally uncompromising and personally obsessed Mike Hammer over the years. Same coin; two very different sides.

In fact, given V.I.’s harsh, unbending beliefs (despite periodic bouts of handwringing), her fierce determination to never compromise and the high toll it’s taken on her emotional and social life, I sometimes wonder if she’s going to completely break down one of these days, or perhaps go completely ballistic, à la Hammer in One Lonely Night.

But no. She’s too tough a cookie for that. Or at least I hope so.

Another thing for which we should all be grateful.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sara Paretsky, like her creation, walks it like she talks it. An ardent feminist, she’s ready and willing to stand up and be heard. She founded Sisters in Crime to help fellow women mystery writers get their fair share. She has also edited a few major anthologies of short stories by contemporary women mystery writers, A Woman’s Eye (1991) and Women on the Case (1996). In fact, her work in other areas seemed to have taken her away from V.I. In 1999, after a long, five year absence, though, V.I. returned, in Hard Time, and has since appeared more or less regularly every few years, every new release scooting to the top of the bestseller lists.

UNDER OATH

THE EVIDENCE

STRAIGHT FROM THE AUTHOR’S MOUTH

NOVELS

ALSO OF INTEREST

SHORT STORIES

COLLECTIONS

FILMS

RADIO

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.

 

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