Sara Paretsky

Uncategorized

(1947–)

One of the best and consistently interesting of the hard-boiled private eyes to burst out of the early eighties female detective boom–and certainly the inspiration for so many more of them — was SARA PARETSKY‘s hard-nosed Chicago P.I. V.I. Warshawski.

But if V.I. was an inspiration for those who followed, the same could be said for the author herself.

Credited with transforming the role and image of women in the crime novel — and particularly in the private eye novel — Paretsky has imbued her long-running, best-selling series with an unapologetically progressive swing, intelligent, defiant and uncompromising, that has left many of her contemporaries and their lip-service liberalism and watered-down feminism in the dust.

Whatever you may think of her politics, there’s no doubt where Paretsky stands. She means it, man. And she walks it like she talks it, wearing her politics on her sleeve and more than willing to stand up and be heard.

* * * * *

Paretsky was born in Ames, Iowa, but grew up in Lawrence, Kansas. By most accounts, it was a troubled childhood. She was the only girl in a family of five children, her parents fought, and the anti-Semitism of the area soon forced the family to move into a house five miles out of town, despite the fact neither of her parents drove at the time.

“Not everything about living in Kansas was difficult,” Paretsky admitted in a 2008 interview, “but it was a difficult part of my life… I felt overwhelmed. My mother got drunk. She didn’t cope with the house. I was in charge of cleaning the house, looking after the small children, I did the baking every Saturday for my father and my brothers… I think I was just numb for a couple of decades.”

At the age of eleven she saw her first story, “The Tornado,” published. It was a non-fiction account of a storm she and her classmates had survived. She won a award for it, and saw it published in a 1959 issue of The American Girl magazine.

And so, graduating from the University of Kansas (where her father was a microbiology professor) with a degree in political science, she made her escape to Chicago in 1966, doing community service work on the south side.

“Chicago is where I came of age and became a person, made a reputation for myself, and I didn’t really want to go back to that.”

She returned in 1968 to work there again and has since made the Windy City her home. She eventually completed a Ph.D. in history at the University of Chicago, and earned an MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. She married Courtenay Wright, a professor of physics at the University of Chicago, in 1976, and had three children.

She founded Sisters in Crime in 1986 to help fellow women mystery writers get their fair share of critical respect (and shelf space).

“We were trying to help women get in print, stay in print, and come to the attention of booksellers and libraries. At that time, books by men mystery writers were reviewed seven times as often as books by women, so libraries and booksellers didn’t know we existed. Thanks to heroic work by women like Linda Grant, Sharyn McCrumb, and Carolyn Hart, we got a Books in Print project off the ground that made a big difference in readers learning what women were writing. Sisters in Crime has more than four thousand members world-wide.”

She has also edited a few anthologies of short stories by contemporary women mystery writers, A Woman’s Eye, in 1991, and Women on the Case in 1996. In fact, her work in other areas at times seemed to have taken her away from V.I., who disappeared for almost five years in the late nineties before returning, feistier than ever, in 1999’s Hard Time. Since then, she’s appeared regularly, each book rushing up the charts, while becoming a much sought-after public speaker and even serving as the 2015 president of the Mystery Writers of America.

UNDER OATH

  • “Warshawski presents an irresistible combination: a cranky, vulnerable woman with a messy life, but a superhuman willingness to put herself in harm’s way for the sake of justice.”
    — Chicago Sun Times
  • “I’m a fanboy… When I was teaching myself to write thrillers, I closely studied Sara Paretsky’s detective V. I. Warshawski..”
    — John Sandford
  • ” ‘A series character,’ says Paretsky in an interview, ‘is your secret Playmate.’ Interviewers have their own way of changing the emphasis of the most self deprecating quote and V. I. is more than a playmate. Once she was given life, she could not and will not be controlled and she will certainly not conform to anyone’s games. Some playmate. You must love or hate her, since the only other choice is a kind of cold fascination which really will not do for such a glorious woman. The best route is to learn to love her even when she makes you choke, but don’t consider her as a cosy and don’t apologize for her behaviour. Not a playmate then, but an alter ego for the bravest as well as the coward; an example of consistent honour: a piece of damaged goods propelled in wrong directions as well as right. Led by the kind of energy which can destroy as well as reform, V. I. is a lost soul of conspicuous intelligence and hectic kindness. One who sheds a skin as easily as a car, she heals her own wounds without crying for help because each time she cried that way before, the silence was not golden. She is lonely often, pathetic, never. The wit is a downtown acid, the eating habits eclectic, the apartment a mess, but the shoes and the courage are divine. Her best possessions are frequently ruined, which she accepts with resignation but not without regret, especially the shoes. To fill the vacuum of her energy and to feed the gnawing conscience, Warshawski will push herself to the limit. She will vex her friends and I wish she was the best of mine, not for the knife edge of anxiety she would cause, but only for the joy of it.”
    — Francis Fyfield in The Scorpion Press
  • “Sara Paretsky is a legend… If you haven’t read her yet, now is the time.”
    — Harlan Coben

NOVELS

SHORT STORIES

  • “The Tornado” (1959, The American Girl)
  • “This is For You, Jeannie” (1972, Women: A Journal of Liberation)
  • “Let’s Have a Big Smile Now, Please” (1988)
  • “A Taste of Life” (1989, Reader, I Murdered Him)
  • “The Takamoku Joseki” (January 1984, AHMM; V.I. Warshawski)
  • “Three-Dot Po” (1984, The Eyes Have It; V.I. Warshawski)
  • “At the Old Swimming Hole” (1986, Mean Streets; V.I. Warshawski)
  • “Skin Deep” (1987, New Black Mask #8; V.I. Warshawski)
  • “Dealer’s Choice” (1999, Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe: A Centennial Celebration; Philip Marlowe)
  • “The Case of the Pietro Andromache” (December 1988, AHMM; V.I. Warshawski)
  • “Lily and the Sockeyes” (1990)
  • “The Man Who Loved Life” (1990)
  • “The Maltese Cat” (1990, Sisters in Crime #3; V.I. Warshawski)
  • “Hooker Malone is Missing” (1991, The New York Times Book Review; co-written with Stephen Dobyns, Loren D. Estleman, Walter Mosley and David Stout)
  • “Settled Score” (1991, A Woman’s Eye; V.I. Warshawski)
  • “Strung Out” (1992, Deadly Allies; V.I. Warshawski)
  • “Freud at Thirty Paces” (1992)
  • “The Great Tetsuji” (1994)
  • “Grace Notes” (1995, Windy City Blues; V.I. Warshawski)
  • “Publicity Stunts” (1996, Women on the Case; 1998, Lethal Ladies II; V.I Warshawski)
  • “Heartbreak House” (1996, Murder for Love/Summer/Fall 1997, MHCMM)
  • “Photo Finish” (Summer 2000, MHCMM; V.I. Warshawski)
  • “At the Century of Progress” (2003, Mysterious Pleasures)
  • “Acid Test” (2006, Deadly Housewives)
  • “A Family Sunday in the Park” (2007, Sisters on the Case; V.I. Warshawski; aka “Marquette Park”)
  • “Poster Child” (2011, Send My Love a Molotov Cocktail)
  • “Family Affair” (2015, Fifty Shades of Grey Fedora; V.I. Warshawski)
  • “Wildcat” (March 2017, digital; V.I. Warshawski)) | Kindle it!
  • “Death on the Edge” (September 2018, digital; V.I. Warshawski) | Kindle it!
  • “Miss Bianca: A Cold War Story” (January 2015, saraparetsky.com)
  • “Love & Other Crimes” (2020, Love & Other Crimes: Stories; V.I. Warshawski)

COLLECTIONS

NON-FICTION

  • “The Breakdown of Moral Philosophy in New England Before the Civil War” (dissertation, University of Chicago)
  • Case Studies in Alternative Education (1975)
  • Writing in an Age of Silence (2007) | Buy this book
    Still fighting the good fight, Paretsky instills her powerful memoir with all the passion, anger and righteous indignation you’d expect. Paretsky refuses to separate her art and her politics — and argues that no artist should — but when she zeroes in on “the Junior Mr. Bush” and the much-hated Patriot Act, the long smouldering rage ignites. Not for the timid or the intellectually slack-jawed, this is as timely and as truly patriotic a tome as I’ve come across this year. No doubt the stormtroopers will be banging on her door any day now.

AS EDITOR

FILMS

SARA AND ME

I was fortunate enough (ie: honored) to moderate a panel with Sara at the 2023 Bouchercon in San Diego. The topic? “The future of the private eye genre, and why it matters.” Before the panel commenced, we discussed numerous topics, including — I couldn’t help myself — hockey. After the panel, I kept the motor running while she robbed a bank.

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

  • Sara Paretsky
    The author’s official web site. Good for a well-written and well-placed rant or two, plus the usual bios, bibliography, etc.
  • Sara Paretsky: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction | Buy this book | Kindle it!
    (2016; by Margaret Kinsman)
    The first real in-depth look at the author.
  • Sara Paretsky Writes What’s On Her Mind
    The legendary crime writer on white collar crime, her lifelong activism, and the importance of a good editor, in a great interview by Lori Rader-Day (May 2019, CrimeReads)
  • Backroom: Sara Paretsky
    “I spent three hours talking to a reporter who distilled my life down to nine bullet points. I was fascinated because he somehow did capture who I am in his distillation,” says Paretsky of this December 2024 Chicago Magazine piece.
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Yeah, I’ve only scratched the surface.

 

Published

2 thoughts on “Sara Paretsky”

  1. Warshawski with Walker and too infrequently Chin and Smith and Rawlins are the last of the great ‘80s revival (also appreciate Atkins and Lupica keeping Spenser going in fine fashion). I greatly miss Nameless, Fortune, and Kinsey, and kinda drifted from McCone when she moved from friendly pro bono neighborhood eye to high-tone security analyst with a paperback hero mate. Wish there was one more full-fledged Scudder left, but Block wrapped things up nicely, sooo….

    Reply

    1. Whole-heartedly agree. The eighties were smack dab in the middle of the second Golden Age of the Private Eye. Others fondly remembered from that era (at least by me) include Fred Carver, John Francis Cuddy, Leo Haggerty, Cliff Hardy, John Marshall, Ben Perkins, Mitch Roberts, and Harry Stoner. No wonder I got hooked on this stuff. Fortunately, Elvis Cole and Nate Heller are still going strong, and Dave Garrett and Jack Liffey (two eyes that never got there credit they deserve) keep coming back.

      Reply

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