Body Work

The audacious new V. I. Warshawski novel from the New York Times-bestselling author

"Doctors take days off--why not PIs?" V.I. Warshawski demands. But when America's hardest-working private eye goes clubbing, a stranger is shot and dies in her arms.

V.I. has been visiting Club Gouge, Chicago's 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 vets--and V.I.'s impetuous cousin, Petra. A tormented young painter shows up, too, and the intricate designs she creates on the Body Artist drives on of the vets into a violent rage.

When the painter is shot, the cops figure it's an easy collar--PTSD vet goes off the rails, stalks then kills young woman. But the vet's family hires V.I. to clear his name, and the detective uncovers a chain of ugly truths that stretch all the way from Iraq to Chicago's South Side.

Sara Paretsky is the author of sixteen books, including her renowned V. I. Warshawski novels, the most recent of which is the New York Times bestseller Hardball. Her many awards include the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement from the British Crime Writers' Association. She lives in Chicago.