Dead Land by Sara Paretsky (2020)
(This review contains very general spoilers).
V.I. Warshawski is not your usual detective, and I love her for it. She’s a fierce, righteous crusader for social justice, with a strong sense of responsibility for everyone in her social circle. It’s that circle that drags her into investigations that promise no financial reward and incur the wrath of oligarchs. Dead Land is no exception. Vic’s goddaughter Bernie Fouchard is coaching a soccer team for underprivileged girls, which leads Vic to a fateful community meeting where the girls are being recognized. That community meeting plants the seeds for Vic’s investigation of two homicides, which have their roots in a corrupt “public-private” partnership to steal Chicago’s southern lakefront for the wealthy; this converges with the story of a homeless singer whose work Bernie loves, who survived a mass shooting that killed her lover, and had a breakdown following that. The melding of these stories creates a web involving Chilean oligarchs, a University of Chicago economist, a mass shooter in Kansas, prairie restorationists, a big multinational law firm, a small Chicago community group, a corrupt city official, and some of Vic’s oldest friends, especially Murray Ryerson. It’s a layered, complex plot, involving some injustices Vic can correct, others that run so deep they can only be exposed, and striking powerfully at Vic’s emotions (about her mother, about her friends, about her own detective work and her ethics) and mine. It’s what Paretsky does best.
She also does originality in her villains. Economists from the University of Chicago just aren’t used as villains in fiction enough. This is probably because they’re too cartoonish. Fiction seems to demand some level of nuance, unlike reality, which is free to be as black and white as it wants. The Chicago Boys didn’t go in for nuance when they allied with Pinochet. Personally, I prefer realistic villains, who often lack delicious ambiguity. So I appreciate Sara Paretsky for making them a villain here. The one slightly jarring note was that Vic didn’t know about them or the U.S. government’s role in Pinochet’s regime. You would think a politically aware, left-wing Chicago native, who has shown some awareness of things like the School of the Americas, would know about it. It’s not out of character, exactly—everyone has limits on their knowledge, and this is not common knowledge even in progressive circles. It was just an odd moment.
But the main draw of Paretsky’s novels, apart from the intricate plotting, is her relationships. Here, Bernie Fouchard and Murray Ryerson take center stage. Bernie is impetuous, passionate, uncompromising, energetic, and filled with the recklessness of youth, and thus prone to drawing Vic into trouble without losing Vic’s sympathy or ours. But Murray, Vic’s old friend—their friendship predates the series—one-time lover, and frequent ally, is the real star here. Though he’s a falling star at first: he’s compromised in his role at Global, but ultimately acts as a true investigator and pays the price for it. His relationship with Vic is given due weight, and it’s immensely satisfying to see him start to pull out of the hole he’s been in since Hard Time.
I also like how Paretsky has been expanding her setting beyond Chicago in recent books. Here, she takes Vic out to Kansas for a large portion of the investigation. She is helped by some of the local people, and at the same time treated with suspicion by many of them. And she has to deal with the unfamiliar local law enforcement—and the people pulling their strings. It’s a great addition of a new story factor, moving the plot along and giving texture to the world. I enjoy Vic in her element in Chicago, but it adds something to see her out of it.
A great Paretsky. I’d rank it very high on the list. I preferred it to the other recent offerings (Shell Game, Fallout, Brushback, Critical Mass) even though I enjoyed all of those, too.
