Hardball by Sara Paretsky Hodder & Stoughton, HK$104
Thirteen novels into her life of crime-fighting, VI Warshawski continues to set the standard other modern detectives must follow. Her adventures are always thrilling and ingenious, but set against a world filled with contemporary problems. Sometimes, the setting and issues detract from a Paretsky plot but in Hardball, they fuse perfectly. Set as always in Chicago, Warshawski unravels a web of homelessness, street gangs, religion and, as noted in a short introduction, the city's race riots in the late 1960s. Warshawski returns from a holiday in Italy with a huge credit card bill. She is about to help a homeless man (Elton) who works her street when he collapses. Having taken him to hospital, the investigator meets the chaplain (Karen Lennon) who asks her to investigate the disappearance of Lamont Gadsden 40 years before. Warshawski connects Gadsden's vanishing act to the murder of a young girl and gangs who served as bodyguards to Martin Luther King. Two more events really propel the plot: her discovery that her ex-cop father might have been involved, and the disappearance of her cousin, Petra. Hardball is grown-up crime fiction, and it's quite brilliant.
