And then there was one? 30 years ago, I started reading the three "godmothers" of the female PI novel, Sue Grafton, Marcia Muller, and Sara Paretsky. Grafton died leaving Kinsey Milhone's alphabet unfinished, and Muller appears to have retired along with Sharon McCone. I haven't yet read the final installments in those series, possibly because I don't want them to end.
Sara Paretsky published another VI Warshawski novel in 2020, and I'm beginning to wonder how much longer I'll be reading new installments, and whether it's time for Paretsky and VI to retire. Previous novels did a good job of mixing VI's cases with Paretsky's social conscience, but Shell Game fell flat. Lotte Herschel's grandson is a Canadian grad student in Chicago and involved with the daughter of Middle Eastern poet and dissident. One night he goes missing and at Lotte's request, VI searches for him. This leads to a plot mixing the refugee crisis, art theft, and VI's ex-husband. While exciting, it never quite fit together and there were a few "superhero" moments that just didn't feel right. I enjoyed it, but it's more like the somewhat forgettable early 2000s VI Warshawski novels than her post-2008 renaissance.
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