It can be difficult to isolate what is remarkable about a book from what the author tells you, in her foreword, is remarkable. I feel the most important thing about the woman private eye, V.I. Warshawski, is the space the author has carefully carved out for her to do things resolutely her own way. She is self-confident enough even to display her doubts and insecurities. She is proud of the emblem of her abbreviated name (at some point, someone exclaims “Veeyai! What an unusual name. Is it African?” – “No,” I answered gravely, “it’s Italian.”’ Which is a strange exchange, since I would have thought ‘V.I.’ is pronounced ‘Vee-eye’.) V.I. manages her jogging regime and her private involvement with a nice enough minor character upon whom she happens during her pursuit of evidence; she manages her fear, not letting herself be intimidated. After being beaten up badly by the heavies, she manages her injuries; the sensations her body and the color scheme her bruises run through are described in great detail. She knows when she will need to get a gun. She has a soft spot and takes care of the vulnerable beyond her professional duties, even if it means slightly overstepping conventional boundaries. She is quick-witted and also beautiful (‘I put on jeans and a yellow cotton top and surveyed myself in the mirror with critical approval. I look my best in the summer. I inherited my Italian mother’s olive coloring, and tan beautifully’). Somehow this feels so deserved. You root for her. And by the unwritten law of private eyes narrating (she is alive to tell the tale) there can be ultimately nothing that can touch her. This imparts the comfort to the reader that she can go in and do the riskiest things and will always get out alive at the other end. A formula that is satisfying but also perhaps a bit shallow. The indemnity thing, the fraudulent scheme that needs to be covered up and explains why young Thayer had to get a bullet through his head, and the way the unions are involved in this, is a bit obscure, but that is a minor aspect, I don’t care. As far as I am concerned, V.I. could have gone full throttle with her self-love and self-observation. Once someone is made attractive to the reader, you want to hear everything, you pardon every fault, you happily follow into every crevice of self-discovery. Which is what a detective story is not meant to provide; instead, the plot rolls on and on.