Status Updates From Hard Time (V.I. Warshawski,...

Mr. Contreras handed me a paper bag. “I been holding this for you since the day you was arrested, doll. I figure you might need it now.” It was my Smith & Wesson, which had been in the handbag I’d flung to Mr. Contreras the day Lemour came to get me.

“If I could stop feeling so humiliated. I know I can’t shut down Coolis. I can’t change any prison anywhere in America. All these degradations will go on and on for any woman who lands there, the sex talk and the rape and whatever else.

When I finally climbed out of the tub it was dark outside. I could hear the steady popping of firecrackers as people in the area geared up for the Fourth of July, coming up on Saturday. (VI spends a lot of time in the tub!)

As VI is driving home from an evening event, she almost runs over a body in the road. Thus begins the major adventure, evidently in this particular episode of the life of the woman who goes from crisis to crisis and from murder to murder. Since I am reading this book of the series in order, and quite back to back, I am getting the full taste of her seemingly endless adventures. Catch your breath if you can VI!

A woman hurrying toward State Street banged into me, jarring the phone and breaking the connection. “Do you think a cell phone gives you ownership of the streets?” she yelled over her shoulder. (cell phones make their first appearance in this 1999 published book in the series.)