Status Updates From Killing Orders (V.I. Warsh...

After that, I didn’t have anything to do except sleep and eat and furnish the new place. I didn’t like to think too much. About Rosa, or my mother, or the ugliness I’d found in myself that night with Walter Novick in the snow. Roger helped keep the thoughts at bay. At least during the day. He couldn’t do much about my dreams. SOME PRETTY BAD CHARACTERISTICS, OF VI SHOWED UP HERE!

As I’d hoped, she was sitting there in front of the fire, the needlepoint project in her lap but her hands still. Standing at an angle in the hall, I watched her. Her handsome angry face was strained. She was waiting for the sound that would tell her I had been shot. HOW MANY ADVENTURES CAN ONE DETECTIVE HAVE IN ONE BOOK?

That’s why Mallory hates talking to me about crime. He thinks Tony Warshawski’s daughter should be making a better world by producing happy healthy babies, not by catching desperadoes.

I didn’t say anything. Whether the Church was working for the poor, as in El Salvador, or supporting the government, as in Spain, it was still, in my book, up to its neck in politics. But it didn’t seem polite to pursue the argument. (one of the nice things about VI is her progressive politics!)

“I’m not coming back to Melrose Park for another round, Albert. If you want to tell me the story I’ll listen. But if I leave now, that’s it; I won’t respond to any more pleas for family unity from Rosa. And by the way, if you do want to hire me, I’m not working out of love for your mother.” (this third book in the series begins with another relative, VI’s hated aunt.)