Body Work

The thing about Sara Paretsky is, shes toughnot because she observes the bone-breaker conventions of the private-eye genre but because she doesnt flinch from examining old social injustices others might find too shameful (and too painful) to dig up. The New York Times Book ReviewDoctors take days offwhy not PIs? V.I. Warshawski demands. But when Americas hardest-working private eye goes clubbing, a stranger is shot and dies in her arms.V.I. has been visiting Club Gouge, Chicagos edgiest nightspot, where a woman known as the Body Artist turns her naked body into a canvas for the audience to paint on.The show attracts all kinds of people, from a menacing off-duty cop to Ukrainian mobsters and Iraq war vetsand V.I.s impetuous cousin, Petra. A tormented young painter shows up, too, and the intricate designs she creates on the Body Artist drive one of the vets into a violent rage.When the painter is shot, the cops figure its an easy collarPTSD vet goes off the rails, stalks then kills young woman. But the vets family hires V.I. to clear his name, and the detective uncovers a chain of ugly truths that stretches all the way from Iraq to Chicagos South Side.