Fallout
V.I. Warshawski 18
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
V.I. Warshawski's impossible god-daughter Bernie convinces her to look for August, a young film-maker who has disappeared. The evidence indicates that he has gone to Kansas in the company of Emerald, an older black movie actress who wants to film the story of her life. Her search takes V.I. from the military base Emerald was born on, to the farm where she grew up outside a university town, ploughing up past and present-day secrets as she goes.
What is happening at the former nuclear missile site next door to the farm? What happened at the site in 1983, when students tried to stage their own version of Greenham Common? Everywhere V.I. turns she seems to be finding more trouble - with not a sign of August and Emerald. And then trouble turns to death . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In MWA Grand Master Paretsky's intriguing, if flawed, 19th V.I. Warshawski novel (after 2015's Brushback), the Chicago PI looks into the disappearance of August Veriden, a quiet young man with dreams of working behind the camera. She learns that August became enamored of Emerald Ferring, a black actress well known in her community but little known to white people. With some cajoling, Warshawski persuades Emerald's close friends to let her follow August and Emerald's path to the University of Kansas in Lawrence, where Emerald was once a student and August was planning to film a documentary about her. On arrival in Lawrence, the detective is welcomed with less-than-open arms. Unfortunately, Paretsky loses the Emerald thread midway as Warshawski becomes entangled in small-town politics, particularly those involving the mentally ill daughter of an eminent scientist and the town's history as a spot for anti-nuke protests in the 1980s. Sharply drawn characters partly compensate for a plot that's fascinating when it stays on track but too often meanders.)
