Sara Paretsky
Encyclopedia : S : SA : SAR : Sara Paretsky
Sara Paretsky (b. June 8, 1947 in Ames, Iowa) is a contemporary American author of detective fiction. Paretsky was raised in Kansas. She graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in political science and then a Ph.D. in history, and finally earned an MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. She has lived in Chicago ever since.
The protagonist of all but one of Paretsky's novels is V.I. Warshawski, a female private investigator. Warshawski's eclectic personality defies easy categorization. She drinks Black Label, breaks into houses looking for clues, and can hold her own in a street fight, but also she pays attention to her clothes, sings opera along with the radio, and enjoys her sex life. Although Warshawski's temper, impulsiveness, and independence land her in most of the danger she faces, the reader still roots for her to win out against the thugs, swindlers, and male chauvinists.
Like those of most successful mystery writers including Dick Francis and Robert B. Parker, Paretsky's plots are based on the traditional formula: someone is murdered in the early pages to conceal a crime (which often involve important corporations and their business in Paretsky's novels), and more killings follow, culminating with Warshawski herself narrowly escaping being killed in a climactic confrontation with the murderer. As with Francis, the lack of variety in Paretsky's storylines is compensated for by rich details about the lives and businesses of Paretsky's characters. And, as in Parker's novels, local color abounds, in Paretsky's case including traffic on the Stevenson Expressway and the perennial travails of the Cubs.
Bibliography
NOVELS- Indemnity Only (1982)
- Deadlock (1984)
- Killing Orders (1985)
- Bitter Medicine (1987)
- Blood Shot (1988)
- Burn Marks (1990)
- Guardian Angel (1992)
- Tunnel Vision (1994)
- Ghost Country (1998)
- Hard Time (1999) ISBN 0385313632
- Total Recall (2001) ISBN 0385313667
- Blacklist (2003) ISBN 0399150854
- Fire Sale (2005)
External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.