Overboard by Sara Paretsky
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Although this is my first Warshawski novel, it’s the 21st in the series. The central character is a female private eye in Chicago (V.I. or Vic). The plot involves some bad guys who have stashed the elderly mother of one of them in a cruel “memory care unit” in order to force her to sign a deed turning over her house to her useless crooked son. The house is a decrepit mansion in a prime location for development. But the woman wants her granddaughter to have the house. That girl becomes imprisoned, but escapes and V.I. finds her and takes her under her wing. The teen nephew of a bad guy also ends up needing her help. Add in violent, corrupt cops, a legal problem going on with the local Jewish synagogue and you have the basic idea. Vic is a former public defender and is thus on the “woke” side of things. She wears a mask (this takes place in 2022, the height of the pandemic) while the bad guys don’t. They swear, steal, and the corrupt cop beats up people especially anyone who is woke. Vic takes ridiculously dangerous risks for the girl and the boy and the synagogue, all without pay. The plot depends heavily on the weak ploy of Vic being able to call on a series of friends and contacts (a reporter, a good cop, etc.) to get or do almost anything that needs doing or getting. It jumps the shark at the paper clip scene, but I’ll leave it at that.

I listened to the audiobook. There were some odd choices made. For starters, the title has nothing to do with the plot. There is no boat or anyone going overboard. Secondly, the voice actor is 65 years old and sounds like it, maybe even older, while Vic is much younger, maybe 50 at most. It sounds odd with an old woman talking in the first person describing her rock climbing, swimming underwater while being shot at, running regularly, winning physical fights with large men. The actress is good, just too old. Thirdly, there’s some kind of superdrone in the plot that can do almost anything including read your thoughts if it flies over you. I can’t recommend the book, but it passed the time.

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