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caitlinxmartin's review against another edition
5.0
One of the things I admire most about Sara Paretsky is her ability to fully embrace the moment and the choices she's made. Like her character, V.I. Warshawski, she is smart, self-aware, passionate, and funny.
This is another series that I've been reading for a very long time. V.I. is great character and Paretsky has done a wonderful job of placing the books in the series close enough in time that Warshawski doesn't age out too soon, but far enough that she does age and we get to go there along with her as priorities shift, stories change, choices become different, and her love for her friends and neighbors remain a constant.
Breakdown is the latest in the series and covers a murdered body in a mausoleum near where some high school girls are playing shapeshifter. This would normally be an interesting occurence (I know I'd follow the story on CNN), but it's made more interesting because two of the girls come from very prominent, wealthy, and powerful families.
There are multiple subplots all swirling around each other, sometimes touching, sometimes not - interrelated, but not necessarily central to the fact of the dead guy with rebar through his chest. Paretsky handles all of this skillfully and I could not put this book down - and I do mean that. I read this everywhere and was fortunate enough to be about halfway through so I could finish it straight through on a Saturday. Yes, it was really entertaining.
I love the way Ms. Paretsky has allowed V.I. to mature - she's not the V.I. she was at the start of the series - she's acquired a certain amount of grace, common sense, and even dignity - this is especially noticeable in this book - which may be one of the very best in the whole series. Must read.
This is another series that I've been reading for a very long time. V.I. is great character and Paretsky has done a wonderful job of placing the books in the series close enough in time that Warshawski doesn't age out too soon, but far enough that she does age and we get to go there along with her as priorities shift, stories change, choices become different, and her love for her friends and neighbors remain a constant.
Breakdown is the latest in the series and covers a murdered body in a mausoleum near where some high school girls are playing shapeshifter. This would normally be an interesting occurence (I know I'd follow the story on CNN), but it's made more interesting because two of the girls come from very prominent, wealthy, and powerful families.
There are multiple subplots all swirling around each other, sometimes touching, sometimes not - interrelated, but not necessarily central to the fact of the dead guy with rebar through his chest. Paretsky handles all of this skillfully and I could not put this book down - and I do mean that. I read this everywhere and was fortunate enough to be about halfway through so I could finish it straight through on a Saturday. Yes, it was really entertaining.
I love the way Ms. Paretsky has allowed V.I. to mature - she's not the V.I. she was at the start of the series - she's acquired a certain amount of grace, common sense, and even dignity - this is especially noticeable in this book - which may be one of the very best in the whole series. Must read.
lrconnol's review against another edition
5.0
It's been a long time since I've read a V. I. Warshawski novel, and now I'm asking myself how could I have overlooked them. Break Down is a tightly plotted, and gripping story that I just couldn't put down. It is now 6:45 AM and I have been up all night to finish this book. I have got to go back and read the early ones again and catch up on the ones I've missed. Vic is one lady I'd really like to meet if characters ever come alive in reality and not just in books and in my mind's eye. Thank you Sara Paretsky for creating such a human and believable story!
shelleyanderson4127's review against another edition
4.0
Vic's 50 and still goin' strong--kicking serious rich dudes' hindquarters. And she hasn't broken any more of Gabriella's wine glasses.
plantbirdwoman's review against another edition
3.0
The famously cranky and snarky Chicago private investigator Victoria Iphigenia Warshawski is back with another quest in search of justice for the powerless and downtrodden. At age fifty, V.I. (Vic) does not seem to have mellowed one whit. Her outrage at injustice burns as brightly as ever. In Breakdown, there is plenty of injustice for her to confront.
The story begins with her being called from a social gathering she's attending with her friend Murray. Her young cousin, Petra, is worried about a group of pre-teenage girls who were in her care. It seems that, under the spell of Carmilla, Queen of the Night, a fictional magical shape-shifting character who is a hero to the girls, they have slipped out at night to an old abandoned cemetery to perform an initiation ritual. Vic leaves her party and goes to the cemetery to round up the girls, but there, she finds more than she bargained for. Near where the girls are performing their ritual is the body of a murdered man with a stake through his heart lying on a tomb. And thus the adventure begins.
One of the girls in the group was the granddaughter of a billionaire survivor of the Holocaust. He is supporting a liberal candidate, a family friend, for the U.S. Senate in Illinois. On the opposite side of the political divide is a cable news network that specializes in giving a radical right-wing slant to all its "news" stories. Its biggest star is Wade Lawlor, a Glenn Beck type character, who rants and rages and cries on camera and has a huge and devoted following. The "news" network and Lawlor are out to destroy Chaim Salanter, the Holocaust survivor, and his candidate for the Senate. To bring about that destruction, they are trying to dig up dirt from the past of Salanter.
Vic gets involved further when a call from an old friend, a brilliant but mentally erratic lawyer, brings her to a meeting, but she arrives too late and finds her friend crumpled in a heap and almost dead, apparently having jumped from a high place. But something doesn't add up and Vic keeps digging which brings her to a state mental hospital where her friend had been a recent resident. Her investigation keeps turning up anomalies and strange links between events and she begins to suspect that everything is related.
Sara Paretsky's plots are always complicated and are overlaid with a strong political point of view. It's one of the things that I enjoy most about her writing. Moreover, her V.I. Warshawski has changed and grown over the years. She has constructed an extended "family" for herself consisting of Mr. Contreras her elderly neighbor, the dogs Mitch and Peppy, her young cousin Petra, and Jake her neighbor with whom she has established a fairly stable (for her) romantic relationship. And, of course, there are always Lotty and Max, themselves Holocaust survivors, who are Vic's oldest and staunchest friends and Murray Ryerson, the journalist with whom she has long worked and who is now being pushed out of his job by the news mogul who owns the right-wing network. All of these characters play strong roles in the present mystery.
Paretsky is a very good writer and her stories always seem torn from today's headlines. It's been that way from the beginning of this series in 1982 with Indemnity Only. I've read all eighteen of the books in the series and it has been fascinating to watch the progression of V.I. Warshawski's life and career. Throughout it all, now thirty years later, she and her creator have retained their edge.
Paretsky's is not really escapist fiction, but stories that are designed to make the reader stop and consider what is actually happening in the real world. It's the kind of fiction which one probably either loves or hates. I happen to love it.
The story begins with her being called from a social gathering she's attending with her friend Murray. Her young cousin, Petra, is worried about a group of pre-teenage girls who were in her care. It seems that, under the spell of Carmilla, Queen of the Night, a fictional magical shape-shifting character who is a hero to the girls, they have slipped out at night to an old abandoned cemetery to perform an initiation ritual. Vic leaves her party and goes to the cemetery to round up the girls, but there, she finds more than she bargained for. Near where the girls are performing their ritual is the body of a murdered man with a stake through his heart lying on a tomb. And thus the adventure begins.
One of the girls in the group was the granddaughter of a billionaire survivor of the Holocaust. He is supporting a liberal candidate, a family friend, for the U.S. Senate in Illinois. On the opposite side of the political divide is a cable news network that specializes in giving a radical right-wing slant to all its "news" stories. Its biggest star is Wade Lawlor, a Glenn Beck type character, who rants and rages and cries on camera and has a huge and devoted following. The "news" network and Lawlor are out to destroy Chaim Salanter, the Holocaust survivor, and his candidate for the Senate. To bring about that destruction, they are trying to dig up dirt from the past of Salanter.
Vic gets involved further when a call from an old friend, a brilliant but mentally erratic lawyer, brings her to a meeting, but she arrives too late and finds her friend crumpled in a heap and almost dead, apparently having jumped from a high place. But something doesn't add up and Vic keeps digging which brings her to a state mental hospital where her friend had been a recent resident. Her investigation keeps turning up anomalies and strange links between events and she begins to suspect that everything is related.
Sara Paretsky's plots are always complicated and are overlaid with a strong political point of view. It's one of the things that I enjoy most about her writing. Moreover, her V.I. Warshawski has changed and grown over the years. She has constructed an extended "family" for herself consisting of Mr. Contreras her elderly neighbor, the dogs Mitch and Peppy, her young cousin Petra, and Jake her neighbor with whom she has established a fairly stable (for her) romantic relationship. And, of course, there are always Lotty and Max, themselves Holocaust survivors, who are Vic's oldest and staunchest friends and Murray Ryerson, the journalist with whom she has long worked and who is now being pushed out of his job by the news mogul who owns the right-wing network. All of these characters play strong roles in the present mystery.
Paretsky is a very good writer and her stories always seem torn from today's headlines. It's been that way from the beginning of this series in 1982 with Indemnity Only. I've read all eighteen of the books in the series and it has been fascinating to watch the progression of V.I. Warshawski's life and career. Throughout it all, now thirty years later, she and her creator have retained their edge.
Paretsky's is not really escapist fiction, but stories that are designed to make the reader stop and consider what is actually happening in the real world. It's the kind of fiction which one probably either loves or hates. I happen to love it.
trusselltales's review against another edition
4.0
Excellent, engrossing, as exciting and entertaining as ever.
psalmcat's review against another edition
4.0
Good. As usual, I was pretty annoyed by V.I. at times, but it's very fun to watch her careening around a city I know pretty well, getting irritated at traffic and some of the same stupid things that irritate me.
This is about a group of teenage girls doing some sort of vampire ritual in a cemetery at night when they happen upon a dead body. And then things get crazy: between a FOXNews-like local network, rabid right-wingers trying to dig up dirt on the Democratic candidate for Senate (or House?), and her supporters trying to keep their private lives private. There's a lot of stuff about a large mental hospital that houses the criminally insane, an old law school classmate, Vic's ex-husband...and WWII, sorta.
This is about a group of teenage girls doing some sort of vampire ritual in a cemetery at night when they happen upon a dead body. And then things get crazy: between a FOXNews-like local network, rabid right-wingers trying to dig up dirt on the Democratic candidate for Senate (or House?), and her supporters trying to keep their private lives private. There's a lot of stuff about a large mental hospital that houses the criminally insane, an old law school classmate, Vic's ex-husband...and WWII, sorta.
annrawson's review against another edition
4.0
The only reason I held back on that fifth star was that I was a little disappointed by the ending of this novel. Somehow it was all too neat and tied up too easily, as if, indeed, it were a one hour TV documentary. But I love Sarah Parestky's novels, and this was no exception. It was a very enjoyable read.
As always in Paretsky's work, there's a great deal of politics - in this case up to the minute, with a focus on TV news - and who owns and controls the content. There's also a very interesting, and dark, backstory. The political issue at the heart of the story is immigration - and here we have stories that go back to the Holocaust, as well as modern day illegals. The TV station in the novel is clearly related to Fox News - and I suppose that readers who prefer that source for their opinions are not going to like this liberal take on these issues.
V.I. Warshawski is one of my all time favourite characters. She is a female private eye, and she is complex, and imperfect, but she is also a real heroine. In many ways she is the female successor to Chandler's Philip Marlowe. The world which they inhabit is noir - but they are not. They seek justice, and often at some personal cost.
An excellent read, and thought provoking as always.
As always in Paretsky's work, there's a great deal of politics - in this case up to the minute, with a focus on TV news - and who owns and controls the content. There's also a very interesting, and dark, backstory. The political issue at the heart of the story is immigration - and here we have stories that go back to the Holocaust, as well as modern day illegals. The TV station in the novel is clearly related to Fox News - and I suppose that readers who prefer that source for their opinions are not going to like this liberal take on these issues.
V.I. Warshawski is one of my all time favourite characters. She is a female private eye, and she is complex, and imperfect, but she is also a real heroine. In many ways she is the female successor to Chandler's Philip Marlowe. The world which they inhabit is noir - but they are not. They seek justice, and often at some personal cost.
An excellent read, and thought provoking as always.
ksparks's review against another edition
3.0
This is a solid V.I. Warshawski mystery. I was not that into it in the beginning, partly because yet again there is a scene early on of the cops giving Vic a hard time. There is no way one P.I. could run into as many nasty stupid cops as Vic does. Her harangues about rich people also get old. But, it ends up being a complex interesting case with a satisfying conclusion.
librarianlaurad's review against another edition
3.0
Well written and I still like the character but I found this a challenge to read...maybe it was just me.