Brush Back (V.I Warshawski #17) by Sara Paretsky, 459 pages

Sara Paretsky is one of my favorite authors of female detective stories.  This is #17 in her series about Chicago private investigator, Victoria (VI) Warshawski.  I don't know if her stories are far enough apart that they all seem unique or if Ms. Paretsky is just an excellent author, but I haven't read a bad VI Warshawski yet, and I'm pretty sure I've caught all 17.

These are gritty, adult books.  Meaning, Paretsky has a large vocabulary and isn't afraid to use it.

In this outing, VI is contacted by an old high school boyfriend who never made it out of the tough south Chicago neighborhood where they grew up.  He asks VI to help exonerate his mother of a crime for which she spent 25 years in jail.  VI reluctantly visits his mother, Stella Guzzo, and the meeting doesn't go well.  VI is sucked back into the old neighborhood, the 25 year old murder case of Stella's daughter and worst of all, dirty Chicago politics.