Hard Time: A V. I. Warshawski Novel

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Random House Publishing Group, Oct 22, 1999 - Fiction - 400 pages
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “When it comes to creating character, evoking place, and writing crackling and convincing dialogue, Sara Paretsky has no peer—and Hard Time proves it once again.”—Chicago Tribune

“Terrific . . . expertly plotted . . . This book [is] her best.”—The New York Times Book Review

In an instant, the lives of two women collided. One was behind the wheel of a Trans Am she liked to drive too fast. The other was lying in the road, dying an agonizing death. When Chicago private eye V.I. Warshawski got out of her car to look at the woman she almost hit, she began a long, harrowing descent into a world of shadowy secrets and tangled lives—and into the darkest heart of her city.

In Hard Time, which heralds the triumphant return of the much-loved heroine V.I. Warshawski, Sara Paretsky revisits the gritty urban landscape she illuminates with brilliant compassion and vivid color. For as V.I. unravels the mystery of a battered and discarded woman, she moves through circles of the rich and the troubled, into the bitter home of a powerful Chicago family, into the pampered world of a TV star, and behind the razor wire of a women’s prison. What V.I. finds is a web of conspiracy—and explosive secrets hidden in the darkest places of all. . . .

”You’ll feel handcuffed to this book until you’ve finished—probably at 3 a.m.”—The Denver Post
 

Selected pages

Contents

Media Circus
The Woman in the Road
House Call
Searching for Wheels
Diving into the Wreck
Sigñor Ferragamo I Presume
7 Habeas Corpus?
Poolside Chat
Crumbs from the Table
Family Picnic
A Friend of the Family
Spinning Wheels Seeking Traction
These Walls Do a Prison Make
Power Dining
Child in Mourning
We Serve and Protect

Out of the Mouths of Babes
Found in Translation
CleanOn the Outside
The Lions
Saturday at the Mall
Night Crawlers
A Run to OHare
Annoying the Giants
Reaching Out ToA Friend?
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About the author (1999)

Sara Paretsky is the author of ten other books, including the bestselling Tunnel Vision, Guardian Angel, and Burn Marks. She lives in Chicago with her husband.

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