Shell Game

 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.

Squeeze Me

When I saw Carl Hiaasen on a speaking tour for Razor Girl, he joked that he hoped Florida didn't cause any problems in the 2016 election. Instead, they became the site of the Winter White House. And at a thinly veiled version of Mar a Lago, Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons, a member of the wealthy and elderly presidential fan club called the Potussies, gets eaten by a snake during the White Ibis Ball for IBS. The club manager calls in wildlife rangler Edie Armstrong to handle the problem and then hires two incompetent (of course) criminals to remove the body (and snake) from Edie's storage locker. Of course they stop at a strip bar along the way, which leads to the decomposed snake disrupting the FLOTUS's motorcade. As usual, Hiaasen ties several ridiculous side stories together into a well supported plot, but my favorite part of the book was the references to all of the minor charity balls being held "after the pandemic." Partially because "Stars for SARS" sounds funny, but partially because it gives hope that there will be an "after" when life returns to normal. Or as normal as it gets in Hiaasen's Florida.