Pay Dirt by Sara Paretsky

 In the 22^nd volume of the V.I. Warshawski series, author Sara Paretsky hits Pay Dirt with a mystery that she traces back to the Civil War. Coming out April 16, the novel follows V.I. as she becomes involved in the search for a missing coed in Lawrence, Kansas, after having attended a basketball game there with her goddaughter Bernie. Bernie has to head back to Chicago for her classes at Northwestern University but she begs V.I. to stay and find the missing woman.

Having just come off a terrible case in which she found another missing teen only to have the irate father murder his son in cold blood then turn the gun on himself, V.I. was depressed. She had not been sleeping well, she was losing weight and muscle tone because she was not eating or working out. Telling herself she was not up to the task of finding the missing coed, she took the job on anyway, and found a drugged and injured girl in a house known for its drug parties.

When working in Chicago, V.I. has acquaintances in the police department as well as a few informants, but she has to work alone—and often in conflict—with the local police and the FBI, which has jumped in because the missing woman was thought to have been kidnapped. With no touchpoints in an unfamiliar city, V.I. doubles down and finds the local opioid distributers quickly, but the police turn a blind eye to her discovery.

V.I. turns up another dead body, this one belonging to an annoying woman from out of town who has been picketing the local school for the dismissal of a teacher accused of having a woke curriculum. The protester demanded that the real history of indigenous people and black settlers in Kansas be told. V.I. finds herself in the middle of a land-use battle over a piece of property that may still be titled to a black family in the 1860s. This tale will not end until V.I. finds herself kidnapped and beaten not once but twice.

Sara Paretsky never disappoints with her multi-layered detective fiction. Kansas raised, Paretsky has been living in Chicago since 1968. She has a Ph.D. in history and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Private investigator Warshawski is the protagonist of all but two of Paretsky's novels; the author is credited with transforming the role and image of women in the crime novel.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting March 19, 2024.

I would like to thank William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.