Breakdown
Lotty and Mr. Contreras and the rest of the crew join V. I. Warshawski once more in this energetic and angry mystery at the sleazy intersection of fancy law firms, politics, and right wing broadcasting. We’re not that far from the mean streets of wartime Vilnius, and nowadays we’re never that far from the mean streets of modern Kiev, and both cast a long shadow over Warshawski’s South Side. It all starts in a disused Chicago cemetery when a bunch of schoolgirls stage an initiation and one sees a vampire. The book is superbly plotted and the writing has its moments, but something terrible has happened to Paretsky’s ear for routine dialog, especially when kids are in the room.