Love & Other Crimes

PUBLISHED June 30, 2020

Of the 14 short stories in this collection, some are new, some have already been published. Some feature V.I., some are standalone. Two – “Wildcat” and “Death on the Edge” – were published only as ebooks and so now will be available in print for the first time. Publication date: June 23, 2020.

Reviews and Quotes
Fourteen stories, most dating from 1996 to 2018, about Chicago shamus V.I. Warshawski, her friends and family, and a remarkably diverse group of other people.

 What’s impressive is the variety of [non-V.I.] stories. Paretsky effortlessly masters Dr. Watson’s voice in an adventure that shows Sherlock Holmes bested by an upstart American and sends Carroll John Daly’s pioneering hard-boiled dick Race Williams to the 1933 Century of Progress Fair. The deftly plotted “Acid Test” shows an apostle of nonviolence arrested for bombing a neighbor’s scientific institute. The charming “Miss Bianca” turns on a 10-year-old girl’s solicitude for a lab mouse. “Heartbreak House,” in which a romance writer’s editor recommends that she consult a psychotherapist, who promptly gets killed, ends the collection on a wryly amused note.

The well-wrought plots and densely imagined worlds make this the most distinguished mystery collection …this year.

— Kirkus (starred review)