Author: paretsky
May 7, 2018
Out-take from Shell Game
When I started writing Shell Game 20 months ago, I imagined at first that it would center on a Syrian poet. My poet was called Tarik Kataba and he was in the U.S. illegally. He had been imprisoned and tortured by Bashar. When he was released, he fled and made his way here through what John le Carré called “the soft routes.”
READ MOREMay 1, 2018
Agency
When Dorothy Salisbury Davis turned eighty, I flew to New York for her birthday. She wasn’t feeling well, and during the three days I spent with her she finally admitted to some bleeding and a low-grade fever. I urged her to let me take her to her doctor but she was adamantly opposed.
READ MOREMarch 24, 2018
Remarks at the ACLU Lunch
March 23 the Illinois ACLU held a fundraising lunch, where we were reminded how close to the edge of losing our Constitutional protections the current occupant is pushing us. We get caught in the daily battles for reproductive health care or protecting immigrants and forget that Congress is abrogating its right and its duty to uphold the separation of powers.
READ MOREFebruary 6, 2018
Head trip
You ever have conversations in your head with important people where you get to change the course of events? Here’s one of mine: So I’m on the phone with my girl Angie and I say, girlfriend, we gotta send one back to you. The Drumpf family from Kallstadt, you know?
READ MOREJanuary 4, 2018
It Occurs to Me that I am America
Lotty Herschel is in prison in my short story, “Safety First.” This story is one of many original stories and pieces of art created for the anthology It Occurs to Me that I am America. All royalties from the sale of this book will go to the ACLU as they fight for our Constitutional rights.
READ MOREOctober 31, 2017
Chiara’s Third Anniversary
It was three years ago today that Chiara came into our lives, courtesy of Christina Yohe in Missouri. In May, we had lost our beautiful girl, Callie, to a bone tumor that pressed into her brain, and I was not ready for another dog.
READ MOREMarch 15, 2017
Watch V.I. in Action in this Video
If you’ve read the V.I. Warshawski books or stories, you know she travels the city up and down. She started when she was a child, performing hair-raising escapades with her cousin Boom-Boom, and she’s still racing around Chicago today.
READ MOREMarch 13, 2017
Watch VI in Action. See her with Sal. See — VI the Video!
If you’ve read the VI Warshawski books or stories, you know she travels the city up and down. She started when she was a child, performing hair-raising escapades with her cousin Boom-Boom, and she’s still racing around Chicago today.
READ MOREFebruary 23, 2017
Fallout – Chapter 1
“The police say it was drug related, ma’am. They think August was stealing to deal.” Angela Creedy spoke so softly I had to lean forward to hear her.
“That is a bêtise—a—a lie, a stupidity.” Bernie Fouchard stomped her foot for emphasis.
January 29, 2017
Weeping
My grandmother was a young teenager in 1911 when she sailed, alone, past the Statue of Liberty into New York harbor. She was fleeing her homeland at her mother’s insistence: her father had been murdered in his bed, in front of his family, by an angry mob — murdering Jews was a frequent public sport in eastern Europe, as lynching African-Americans was in the southern U.S.
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