Sara Paretsky: Critical Mass

Sara Paretsky: Critical Mass (USA 2014)

From the Publisher:
In 1939, Dr. Lotty Herschel, V. I. Warshawki's closest friend in Chicago, escaped the Holocaust in Vienna with her childhood playmate, Kitty Saginor Binder. Though the two drifted and animosities grew between them over the years, when Kitty's daughter finds her life in danger, she turns to Lotty for help. In turn, Lotty summons V.I. to take the case.

The threats on the daughter's life at first seem a simple case of bad drug dealings, but V.I. soon discovers that they are just the tip of an iceberg of lies, secrets and silence whose origins trace back to the deadly race among America, Germany, Japan, and England to develop the atomic bomb. And while the secrets may be old, the people who continue to guard them will do anything to make sure they stay buried....

Sara Paretsky: Critical Mass. A V.I. Warshawski Novel. New American Library, ISBN: 9780451468185 (September, 2014), 576 p., $9.99.

Sara Paretsky: Critical Mass (UK 2014)

From the Publisher:
The sixteenth V.I. Warshawski thriller from one of America's greatest female crime writers, combining contemporary issues, the fight against injustice and fast-paced suspense.
Private Eye V.I. Warshawski is roused one morning by an SOS from a woman on a farm south of Chicago. When V.I. gets there, she finds no woman - but a dead man in a cornfield, his body savagely mutilated.

V.I. is happy to leave the case to the local sheriff: it looks like a falling out among meth dealers. But back in Chicago, she learns that the missing woman is a prot?g?e of her oldest friend and confidante, Dr Lotty Herschel, and is compelled to investigate.

What V.I. uncovers pulls her into a world of nuclear secrets and high-stakes computing, with roots reaching back to the Second World War. The detective soon finds herself in a hall of mirrors where she can't tell reality from video games, and her life is on the line. For V.I., this is her most profound, and terrifying, adventure yet...

Sara Paretsky: Critical Mass. An invention that changed the world. A secret that changed everything. The sixteenth V.I. Warshawski Novel. Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN: 9781444758702 (August, 2014), 480 p., £7.99.

Sara Paretsky: Critical Mass (UK 2013)

From the Publisher:
The sixteenth V.I. Warshawski thriller from one of America's greatest female crime writers, combining contemporary issues, the fight against injustice and fast-paced suspense.
BONUS: an exclusive first look at a special end chapter - only included in the first printing of the hardcover.

When private eye V.I. Warshawski is called out to a derelict drug house in a rural town just south of Chicago, she discovers something she wasn't expecting: the mutilated corpse of a man, dumped in a cornfield.

It is a discovery that throws V.I. into the fascinating world of physics and invention: a design which sparked the construction of the computer as we know it, the development of nuclear weapons, the wonder of Newton's prisms and a train of dramatic events that occurred in war-time Vienna over seventy years ago.

With a range of suspects too scared to open up, V.I. must delve deep into the past to find clues. Someone holds the answers to her questions - someone who will stop at nothing to prevent the truth from resurfacing...

Packed with Paretsky's masterfully crafted suspense and offering an illuminating insight into some of the greatest scientific developments of the twentieth century, this is set to be V.I.'s most enlightening - and exhilarating - adventure yet.

Sara Paretsky: Critical Mass (USA 2012)

From the Publisher:
New York Times-bestselling author Sara Paretsky's brilliant protagonist V.I. Warshawski returns in another hard-hitting entry, combining razor-sharp plotting and compelling characters with a heady mix of timely political and social themes.

V.I. Warshawski's closest friend in Chicago is the Viennese-born doctor Lotty Herschel, who lost most of her family in the Holocaust. Lotty escaped to London in 1939 on the Kindertransport with a childhood playmate, Kitty Saginor Binder. When Kitty's daughter finds her life is in danger, she calls Lotty, who, in turn, summons V.I. to help. The daughter's troubles turn out to be just the tip of an iceberg of lies, secrets, and silence, whose origins go back to the mad competition among America, Germany, Japan and England to develop the first atomic bomb. The secrets are old, but the people who continue to guard them today will not let go of them without a fight.

Sara Paretsky: Critical Mass. A V.I. Warshawski Novel. Putnam's, ISBN: 9780399160561 (October, 2013), 465 p., $26.95, eBook $12.99.