Sara Paretsky: Blood Shot (UK 2013)

From the Publisher:
When V.I. Warshawski is asked to search for the father of a childhood friend, she assumes it'll be a straightforward case. But the return to her old Chicago neighbourhood reignites dark memories from her past - memories she'd sooner forget.

As the body of another old friend suddenly turns up, V.I. finds herself embroiled in a dangerous quest for justice which pits her against the bosses of big business and industrial corruption. It's one of her toughest and most personal cases yet, one from which she may not emerge entirely unscathed...

Sara Paretsky: Blood Shot. Corruption is a dangerous game... Hodder, ISBN: 9781444761443 (January, 2013), 399 p., £7.99.

Sara Paretsky: Blood Shot (USA ca. 1995)

From the Publisher:
V.I. Warshawski isn't crazy about going back to her old south Chicago neighborhood, but a promise is something she always keeps. Caroline, a childhood friend, has a dying mother and a problem -- after twenty-five years she wants V.I. to find the father she never knew. But when V.I. starts probing into the past, she not only finds out where all the bodies are buried -- she stumbles onto a very new corpse. Now she's stirring up a deadly mix of big business and chemical corruption that may become a toxic shock to a snooper who knows too much.

Sara Paretsky: Blood Shot. A V.I. Warshawski Mystery. Dell, ISBN: 0440204208 (ca. 1995), 376 p., $5.99.

Sara Paretsky: Toxic Shock (UK 1990)

From the Publisher:
Vic Warshawski was not always Chicago's slickest Private Investigator. She used to play nurse-maid to Caroline Djiak, and now Caroline is employing Vic to find out who her father was.

Vic's investigations lead her to the seedy South Side of Chicago and the Xerxes chemical plant where Caroline's mother was once employed. There, even the most innocuous questions meet with a deafening silence. Something is being concealed. Something a lot more serious than a paternity suit. Can Vic expose the truth before she is removed from the case -- permanently?

Sara Paretsky: Toxic Shock. A Warshawski Story. Penguin, ISBN: 0140124098 (May, 1990), 320 p., £3.99.

Sara Paretsky: Blood Shot (USA 1989)

From the Publisher:
V.I. Warshawski isn't crazy about going back to her old south Chicago neighborhood, but a promise is something she always keeps. Caroline, a childhood friend, has a dying mother and a problem -- after twenty-five years she wants V.I. to find the father she never knew. But when V.I. starts probing into the past, she not only finds out where all the bodies are buried -- she stumbles onto a very new corpse. Now she's stirring up a deadly mix of big business and chemical corruption that may become a toxic shock to a snooper who knows too much.

Sara Paretsky: Blood Shot. A V.I. Warshawski Mystery. Dell, ISBN: 0440204208 (June, 1989), 376 p., $4.50.

Sara Paretsky: Blood Shot (USA 1988)

From the Publisher:
She's been called "the most engaging woman in detective fiction since Dorothy Sayers's Harriet Vane" (Newsweek). She's the indomitable V. I. Warshawski, who knows as much about the dark side of her native Chicago as she does about fine cuisine, opera, fashion, and, of course, men. Now, in her fifth and most probing V. I. novel, Sara Paretsky brings the private investigator back to her old neighborhood and to the past she cannot escape.

Blood Shot begins innocently enough when V.I. attends the reunion of her championship basketball team and Caroline, a childhood friend who organized the event, asks V.I. a professional favor: "Find my father for me."

Caroline's mother is dying, and Caroline wants to meet the father she has never known. The search for him not only calls up memories of V.I.'s own childhood but quickly mushrooms into something darker. After V.I. starts to probe, the body of another old friend turns up in the appropriately named Dead Stick Pond.

Who would want Nancy Cleghorn dead? The list of suspects includes everyone from a powerful alderman to the chairman of a great chemical conglomerate. And what is the connection between Nancy's death and the search for Caroline's father?

Moving across Chicago from its decaying industrial districts to its posh Gold Coast, V.I. uncovers a network of corruption. The deeper V.I. digs, the murkier things get, until she finds herself at the mercy of malevolent forces completely beyond her control.

With Blood Shot, Sara Paretsky proves once again why her heroine, V.I. Warshawski, "is the detective many mystery fans have been waiting for" (Newsweek) and why, since her appearance on the mystery scene, detective fiction has never been quite the same.

Sara Paretsky: Blood Shot. A V.I. Warshawski Mystery. Delacorte Press, ISBN: 0440500354 (September, 1988), 328 p., $17.95.