{"id":2178,"date":"2017-08-08T08:03:27","date_gmt":"2017-08-08T15:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=2178"},"modified":"2017-08-08T08:03:27","modified_gmt":"2017-08-08T15:03:27","slug":"out-of-the-briar-patch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=2178","title":{"rendered":"Out of the briar patch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bob Moyer takes a look at the latest fine book in a series that he considers very good indeed.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer<\/p>\n

FALLOUT. By Sara Paretsky. William Morrow. 448 pages. $27.99.<\/p>\n

\"Fallout_Sara-Paretsky_cover\"<\/a>Private eye V.I. Warshawski, known as Vick to her friends, has been called a few other things by those who are not her friends \u2014 Pit Dog, Douna Quixote and \u201cinterfering bitch.\u201d\u00a0 She\u2019s been solving tough cases in and around Chicago for 18 or so novels now, taking advantage of\u00a0 \u201c\u2026how to get things done here, who the players are, and what games they cheat at. It\u2019s where my friends are, so if I fall on my face, as we all sometimes do, the people are here who will glue me back together.\u201d In short, she\u2019s comfortable in what she calls her \u201cbriar patch.\u201d<\/p>\n

When her niece persuades her to track down an African-American documentary filmmaker and his subject who have disappeared, she has to leave the comfort of home for foreign territory \u2014 Lawrence, Kansas. Within a short time after her arrival, the African-American community collectively clams up, a woman who calls her with information gets almost killed with an overdose of \u201croofies,\u201d and both the police and sheriff stonewall her. She\u2019s definitely not in her \u201cbriar patch.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s before the body count begins to build. Every time she turns around, another body turns up. With suspicious frequency, so do the sheriff and the commander of the local Army base. Combining conversations with her only resource, her dog Pepper, and her \u201c\u2026gut, that famous residence of detective intuition,\u201d she figures out the source of the danger that made the filmmaker and his subject disappear.<\/p>\n

Sara Paretsky places the crime within a context of Lawrence\u2019s complex racial history, as well as the conflict brought about by the presence of a missile base back in the 1980s. She also puts the trademark \u201coops I didn\u2019t bite my tongue soon enough\u201d dialogue into and out of Vick\u2019s mouth, and of course drops her into mortal danger, the Fallout<\/em> for knowing too much. It\u2019s another well-planned trip with V.I., the pre-eminent female P.I. in American crime literature.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bob Moyer takes a look at the latest fine book in a series that he considers very good indeed. Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer FALLOUT. By Sara Paretsky. William Morrow. 448 pages. $27.99. Private eye V.I. Warshawski, known as Vick to her friends, has been called a few other things by those who are not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[590,5],"tags":[985,983,984],"class_list":["post-2178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-detective-fiction-mysteries","category-mysteries","tag-female-detective-fiction","tag-sara-paretsky","tag-v-i-warshawski"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2180,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178\/revisions\/2180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}