When I started this book, I didn’t understand how much I wanted a read that rose to five stars. Blood Shot doesn’t rise to the level of great classical literature but it served my needs better than I could have hoped. Lots of action requiring suspension of disbelief led to a conclusion worthy of a graphic comic book. After I finished the book, I looked at the GR ratings and reviews. Of 2700 GR ratings, only seven have given this book only one star. On the other hand, two-thirds have given it four or five stars.Can there be such a thing as a comfort series (like comfort food)? Strange as it may seem the V.I. Warshawski mystery series calms me as I approach it and, once I start, makes me want to keep reading. This doesn’t mean that Paretsky writes a dull book, but V.I. has a certain personality that is both familiar and being built on in each book. I find that enjoyable: watching someone doing things that require both physical and mental skills. I am passing on my Warshawski books to my 92 year old Dad; he thinks it is not quite believable that she gets beat up regularly but bounces back quite rapidly for more. That happened more than once in this book. That doesn’t bother me since the story is one adventure in a year of her life so she undoubtedly has quite a few threatening-call free and non-pugilistic months. Besides, it is fiction!So here we have a woman who was a skilled basketball player in high school, both parents died when she was quite young, her dad was a cop and she still lives in the same city (Chicago) where she was brought up, she runs five or ten miles most mornings and eats plain peanut butter when “the maid” hasn’t been shopping recently. She does go back to the old neighborhood in this book, the fifth in the series (http://www.goodreads.com/series/55214...) published in 1988 that now is up to fifteen books and still developing.Maybe you will understand “comfort series” better if I tell you that the last two books I read were in the Burke series of Andrew Vachss. Compare and contrast Burke with Warshawski! That would be interesting wouldn’t it? My my! Maybe it is just that Burke is so noir that he makes Warshawski seem like snows white as. Or maybe it is just Warshawski and her nine lives. Someone being interviewed by Warshawski asks, “So you’re a private investigator. And do you find it a job that allows you to be both careful and reckless?” I think that summarizes the spirit and methodology of our heroine. Of course, since this is a series with at least ten books to go, there is no nagging fear of her being killed. That contributes to it being a thrilling comfort series, if that combination of words is plausible. It might be different if I was reading the books as they come out; each book could be the last with Paretsky moving on. For some people reading a nearly twenty-five year old series might not be appealing. But I do figure to get up to the current time eventually. In the meantime, I am enjoying the ride.I thought “catfight” was a sometimes derogatory name for a fight between two women. V.I. and a woman she has known most of her life, Caroline, get into a verbal catfight that consumes several pages on at least a couple of occasions. I found myself being more annoyed at this than it seemed like I would have been if it had been two men. My stereotype is that two men arguing like this would deteriorate into a physical fight. Women aren’t allowed to do the same. It’s not ladylike. That sounds like my own prejudice coming out. If your protagonist is a strong, independent woman detective, does she have to do all the things the macho men do? I hope not! The verbal sparring went on between Warshawski and several other characters as well.Slamming doors and angry phone hang-ups were a steady diet.V.I says, “Caroline, I’m mad enough to beat the shit out of you. But I’m not so mad I can’t think. You fingered me to the cops because there’s something you know that you’re scared to talk about. I want to know what it is.” So it seems the threat of violence is really only a threat to let Caroline know how very angry Warshawski is. Later in the book there is another aversive verbal interaction with the same woman where V.I. again threatens physical assault. This is not something I remember about her from previous books. Warshawski mostly does not carry a gun because she would rather depend on her “wits.” So there is that about her in relationship to violence. And she carries her gun quite a lot and actually fires it in this book.You may wonder what the police are doing while Warshawski is busy solving the murder. They tell her to butt out but of course she never does. What would be the point of butting out if you have to solve the case. She usually has some personal connection that gets her involved and then she just has to follow through regardless of the danger to herself or others. When she gets threatening phone calls, she does not tell the police. And withholding evidence is second nature to her. I should go to McGonnigal, tell him what I knew, or rather whet I suspected. But. But. I really didn’t have anything concrete. Maybe I’d give the kid twenty-four hours to show up. If he was already dead, it wouldn’t matter. Warshawski has some shortcomings. At least in the eyes of others. “You know, Victoria, in your search for the truth you often force people to face things about themselves that they are better off not knowing. I can forgive you for doing it with Lotty – she’s tough, she can take it. And you don’t spare yourself. But because you are very strong you don’t see that other people cannot deal with these truths.“Look, Max, I don’t know why Chigwell tried to kill himself. … But if it was because of the questions I was asking, I don’t feel one minute of remorse. … If – and it’s a mighty big if – if I’d known two weeks ago that my seeing him would make him turn on the gas, you’d better believe I’d do it again.” This book is filled with intense human interactions because Warshawski is closely connected in some way to so many people and puts her nose in just about any business she encounters. I imagine her character in a war novel walking point and doing and heroic things. My nonagenarian father is right though about Warshawski bouncing back unbelievably quickly from life threatening events. She is a Wonder Woman in this book. He frowned. “You really are a cold-blooded bitch, aren’t you? Near death one day and hot on the trail the next. Sherlock Holmes didn’t have anything on you.” I just don’t have enough experience with murder mysteries to be sure if this is typical but I suspect it must be. How many people want to read something dull and drawn out? “I would ask that you not be reckless, Victoria. I would ask it except you seem to be in love with danger and death. You make life very hard for those who love you.” I can only wonder how this truth will play out in the coming books in the series. This book is as much about Warshawski coming to terms with her independence and her limitations. I drank some of the milk and lay down on the daybed with my boots off, but I couldn’t relax. All I could think was that I had run scared from my problems, had turned to the police, and now I was waiting like some good old-fashioned damsel in distress for rescue. It was too much. A little after midnight I pulled my boots back on. She is surely “in love with danger and death.” You wonder about my “comfort series” comments earlier? Reading can become a real page turner event with enough action to raise my blood pressure. But still the anticipation of this possibility as I approach the book is somehow comforting. It is my expectation of meeting a friend, going on an adventure that is far outside of my normal life and somehow ending up safe having solved the case. If you seek an adrenaline junkie, you have found one.I did get my five stars right when I needed it. I may have lowered the five star bar somewhat to allow Warshawski to get over it. It would be OK with me if she worked on being more a team player and less of a Wonder Woman in the future. We will see in her next adventure how many more of her evidently unlimited lives she uses up. I am thinking she is in her late 30s so her body will not stand for the abuse much longer. Of course, one of the supporting characters is a seventy-nine year old who rushes to the rescue with V.I. in the shoot’em up face off. Maybe Sara Paretsky will unveil her fountain of youth one day.
Once again, Private Detective V.I. Warshawski stumbles and bumbles around Chicago trying to solve cases with limited success. She never seems to learn anything, and neither do the police, especially Lt. Bobby Mallory. From one book to another, the characters make the same stupid mistakes, never learning from any of them. This novel, and the other V.I. Warshawski novels are written very much like 1950’s-era noir detective novels where the detective makes a lot of wise cracks while stumbling from one event to another and making the police look like fools. A “real” detective should have enough between the ears to figure some things out before being hit in the face with them. For V.I. Warshawski, wise cracks are a substitute for analysis, planning and critical thinking. These books make me think about what it would look like if the Keystone Kops met the Three Stooges. Warshawski has a gun which she is licensed to carry. Presumably, she has been trained in the use of that gun. Yet, she consistently leaves the gun at home, especially at times when you would think that she would know enough to carry it with her. Because of this bias against carrying her weapon, Warshawski is nearly killed in every story the author writes. She gets beat up, almost drowned, shot at, and she never figures out that having a license to carry a gun in a dangerous occupation is a good reason for her to carry that gun. She also uses a shoulder holster, or no holster at all. She frequently shoves the gun into her waistband where she can accidentally shoot herself rather than to obtain an inside- or outside-the-waistband holster to use when the shoulder holster is not feasible. In fact, Warshawski gets beat up so much that I am beginning to believe that there might be a thread of masochism running through all of the stories.Warshawski is less than 40 years old. She exercises regularly, including running and working out at home. She watches her diet and is, presumably, very fit. Yet, she seems to be in such poor physical condition that she frequently collapses from exhaustion. She falls asleep while talking to others and exhibits the physical characteristics of a 90 year-old woman. She whines constantly about being weak, tired or exhausted. What’s up with that? Why does she seem to have no stamina? She seems to have some sort of “sleeping sickness.” No matter how much sleep she gets, she has trouble staying awake long enough to get through the plot. On page #154 Warshawski tells us: “I don’t make a habit of carrying a gun -- if you do, you get dependent on them and your wits slow down …” Does she believe, then, that police officers are slow witted? After all, they carry guns. This statement represents the absolute rubbish that is used to explain why Warshawski often leaves her gun behind even when she steps into dangerous situations after being threatened, and even attacked. On page # 218 Warshawski sticks her Smith & Wesson into her jeans, but is then apparently allowed into a police station where she looks at suspects in a lineup. The police do not require her to leave her loaded gun in a safe place. On top of that, after Warshawski shoots two men and the police arrive, her gun is not confiscated and held for evidence. We know that Warshawski occasionally stays with her friend, Dr. Charlotte (Lotty) Herschel. On one of these occasions, described on P. 274, she decides to load a second “clip” for her gun and stick it in her jacket pocket. She does not explain why she refers to magazines as clips, why she has a second, empty, magazine with her, why it is empty, or how and where she obtained the ammunition with which to load it at her friend’s home. The end of the story is unsatisfying. Loose ends are left dangling. We are never told, for example, whether the people who murdered her friend Nancy, and who tried to murder Warshawski, herself, are ever brought to justice. The small fish seem to routinely get caught by the police while the big sharks seem to swim away unharmed in this author’s novels. It is a pattern that is repeated in all of her works that I have read so far. The top bosses of the evil bad guys seem never to be brought to justice. This is the fifth V.I. Warshawski novel that I have finished reading. They are becoming tedious and repetitive. I would not recommend this book, and I won’t be reading any more of the series. 1 Star
What do You think about Blood Shot (1989)?
Aren’t holiday weekends wonderful for leisure reading?! I sat in the sunshine in the little courtyard out the back of our motel unit in Opotiki – with a glass of wine and a Sudoku book for alternating with this – and read the second in this volume.V.I. and Caroline Djiak go way back – all the way back to their rough-and-tumble girlhoods in grimy South Chicago – so when Caroline comes begging for a favour, V.I. cannot refuse. No sooner does V.I. get on the case than she discovers that the chemical plant employing half the neighbourhood has been poisoning residents and employees for years, and someone’s engaged in a massive cover-up. Pollution and greed are a lethal combination – and V.I. herself may be the next victim.Actually, it took some while before she realised what was going on. She was trying to find Caroline’s birth father, but people were trying to scare her off and it didn’t figure. Then things began to make sense.
—Kathleen Dixon
Blood shot is book five in the Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski series. V.I. is an attorney turned private investigator in Chicago. In this book Paretsky gives us a tour of Chicago with all the sights, sounds, smells and history of Chicago’s South side. This book was written in 1989 when computers were just starting to be common place but cell phones were rare and expensive. V.I. is hunting for phone booths while searching for change and is using a word processor in her office. Vic returns to the South side to her high school basketball team’s 20th re-union of winning the championship as the current team is on the brink of winning. Carolyn who had lived next door to Vic wants her to find out who her father was. Carolyn’s mother is dying of kidney cancer. She had worked all her life at the local Xerxine plant. In hunting for men her mother knew from work Vic finds many have died of kidney or liver cancer and discovers how toxic Xerxine is. The author juggles wisecracks, tenderness, and grit in a fast pace action filled story. Paretsky always has created great characters and this book is no exception. The book has a great plot and numerous sub plots that keep the readers on their toes. I read this as an audio book downloaded from Audible Susan Ericksen does an excellent job narrating the book.
—Jean Poulos
Wow. This is one THRILLING book! I couldn't put it down! V.I. Warshawski faces her most PTSD-inducing case in the series so far and manages to dig up a lot of information on her own past, both of which promise to give her nightmares for a long time. V.I. would rather drive into hell than go back to her old Chicago neighborhood, but a pleading request from a childhood friend, Carolyn Djiak, during a charity basketball game for her old high school forces her to submit to her conscience and give in. As she drives through the familiar streets, her heart sinks as she realizes that the massive manufacturing job losses among her old Polish Catholic neighbors has changed the xenophobic community for the worse; unpainted houses, deferred maintenance of roofs and gardens, abandoned businesses and empty lots. However, the poverty only depresses her, but what sets her teeth grinding is seeing evidence everywhere that for this community, 1950's values have never been discredited. Wives are still second-class citizens and housemaids, daughters are raised to know their place is providing cleanliness, housewife skills and obedience, and getting an education is discouraged as being against the edicts of God for women. V.I. can barely control her rage and disgust.Carolyn's request is that she wants to find out who her father is. Her mother, Louisa, is dying of cancer, and she refuses to tell her daughter anything about the circumstances about the pregnancy and the subsequent rupture of her relationship with her, Louisa's, parents, who threw Louisa into the streets at age 15 upon learning of her pregnancy. V.I.'s distaste at becoming involved with anything to do with her childhood friends is so great she'd rather put out her own eyes than take this case, but once again, the memory of V.I.'s dead mother, Gabriella, haunts her into compliance with Carolyn's desire.Unexpectedly, in following up on gossip about who Louisa was dating, V.I. hits a wall of hostility, suspicion and lying. Curious, she digs further into the chemical company the two possible fathers worked for, which leads to a politician and union leader, an industrial doctor, a mob boss, a workman's compensation insurance provider, and the neighborhood's wealthiest investor - all of whom become very nervous at her mundane questions. For the first time, V.I. wants to solve this mystery, even after Carolyn reverses herself and tries to fire the stubborn P.I.Every rock that V.I. turns over seems to lead to an ever-growing pile of evidence of a cover-up and corruption - but what? One thing for sure, the threats and escalating attacks against her quickly lead V.I. to the startling awareness that in starting this investigation, she must now finish it - or she will be killed.
—aPriL does feral sometimes
