Carmilla, Queen of the Night, is a shape-shifting raven whose fictional exploits thrill girls all over the world. When tweens in Chicago’s Carmilla Club hold an initiation ritual in an abandoned cemetery, they stumble on an actual corpse, a man stabbed through the heart in a vampire-style slaying.

The girls include daughters of some of Chicago’s most powerful families: The grandfather of one, Chaim Salanter, is one of the world’s wealthiest men; the mother of another, Sophy Durango, is the Illinois Democratic candidate for Senate.

For V. I. Warshawski, the questions multiply faster than the answers. Is the killing linked to a hostile media campaign against Sophy Durango? Or to Chaim Salanter’s childhood in Nazi-occupied Lithuania? As V.I. struggles for answers, she finds herself fighting enemies who are all too human.

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About Sara Paretsky

Sara Paretsky is the author of eighteen books, including her renowned V. I. Warshawski novels. She was named 2011 Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, and is also the recipient of the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award given by the British Crime Writers’ Association. She lives in Chicago. You can learn more about Sara at www.saraparetsky.com.

Editorial Review

V.I. Warshawski’s 14th case entangles everyone in Chicago from a murdered private eye to a pair of Senate candidates and the world’s 21st-richest man.

Little do the seven tween girls invoking the spirit of that famous fictional vampire Carmilla, Queen of the Night, at a secret ceremony in Mount Moriah Cemetery know that only a few yards away lies the fresh corpse of one Miles Wuchnik, very recently added to the rolls of the dead. V.I., leaving a high-rolling party for right-wing media darling Wade Lawlor to respond to her cousin Petra’s plea to find Kira Dudek, one of the tweens, wakes up the next morning to learn that although she succeeded in getting the girls away from the murder scene before the police arrived, Lawlor and all his dittoheads are implicating her in the murder of the colleague she never met. It’s entirely plausible that V.I. might be taking money from billionaire Chaim Salanter to protect his granddaughter Arielle Zitter, another of the tweens. And since Salanter is a prominent contributor to the senatorial campaign of University of Illinois president Sophy Durango, it figures that Lawlor, a big booster of Sophy’s opponent, creationist Helen Kendrick, would go after both Salanter and V.I. But the sad fact is that Salanter hasn’t hired Warshawski (Body Work, 2010, etc.); in fact, he meets with her repeatedly only to warn her to stay off the case. Not that she’s not distracted all on her own, since her old law school friend, bipolar attorney Leydon Ashford, has just been thrown from a height at Rockefeller Chapel and lies near death. Leydon’s last cryptic message—“I saw him on the catafalque”—seems to connect the attack on her to Wuchnik’s murder. Can V.I. put together the pieces in time to save the young witnesses from the killer?

Plotted with all Paretsky’s customary generosity, this standout entry harnesses her heroine’s righteous anger to some richly deserving targets, all linked together in a truly amazing finale. – Kirkus Reviews

A ‘Breakdown’ Full Of Thrills, Chills And Social Ills

NPR Book Review – January 6, 2012 (Excerpt)

The opening scene of the latest V.I. Warshawski novel confirms the worst fears of any parent whose daughter has been swept up by the Twilight craze: Namely, books can be dangerous. It’s a dark and stormy summer night in Chicago, and V.I. is tracking a bunch of 12- and 13-year-old girls through an abandoned cemetery. The tweens — all members of a reading group transfixed by a series about a supernatural shape-shifting character called Carmilla, Queen of the Night — have sneaked out of their respective houses to do something secret. V.I. finds them in the cemetery, getting ready to perform an initiation rite on one of their members. But just as V.I. is about to intrude on the mumbo jumbo, one of the girls screams and points to a nearby gravesite. There, a dead man is laid out on a stone slab, a metal rod protruding from his chest. A few minutes earlier, V.I. had glanced at the slab as she crept up on the girls, but she’d thought the corpse was a statue. In middle age, V.I.’s eyesight isn’t what it once was.

All of V.I.’s other powers, however, as well as those of her creator, Sara Paretsky, are as vital and limber as they were 20 years ago when she first charged down the mean streets of Chicago and into hard-boiled history in her debut adventure, Indemnity Only. If anything, the Warshawksi novels have only grown better: more ambitious in their construction and fiercer both in their feminist politics and in their commitment to storylines about social justice. A typical Warshawski investigation not only zooms in on the genre’s “usual suspects” (greedy opportunists, professional con artists, dysfunctional families), but also the larger social ills plaguing contemporary America. Recent novels have explored the subjects of homelessness, illegal immigrants, domestic violence and the unfulfilled promises of the civil rights movement. Breakdown, the 18th novel in the series, tackles the ever-widening class divide in America, as well as the unchecked power of media pedagogues. If you’re a fan of Bill O’Reilly, you probably won’t like Breakdown, since he is clearly a model for the faux populist, right-wing ranter Wade Lawlor, who is pilloried in the novel. Then again, O’Reilly’s audience and Paretsky’s probably don’t overlap a whole lot anyway. [Read the full article...]

‘Breakdown’ review: V.I. Warshawski on the case again

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – January 18, 2012 (Excerpt)

One of the many pleasures of Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski novels is that the sharp-tongued, short-tempered detective often seems to be following clues that lead not just to the heart of whatever mystery is at hand, but also into the red-hot center of the zeitgeist itself.

Recent books have dealt with the trauma of the Iraq War and the dangers of the Patriot Act. In the 1980s, when V.I. burst onto the scene as one of publishing’s first “hard-boiled” female detectives, the plots were spun of the concerns of those times, from corporate malfeasance to labor racketeering.

And now, as the presidential campaign heats up, her latest venture, “Breakdown,” features a Michele Bachmann-esque character running for Senate, a bloviating yet powerful conservative talk-show host, anti-immigrant hysteria and, because Paretsky also has a sense of humor, a “Twilight”-like young adult horror novel penned by the delightfully-named Boadicea Jones.

The book opens with V.I. in a dark cemetery, rain pelting her evening gown, looking for a group of girls obsessed with books about supernatural shape shifters. Before the first chapter is over, a man has been stabbed through the heart, vampire-style, in a nearby tomb. [Read the full article...]

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THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

I live in Greenfield, Massachusetts. I observe. I get annoyed. And I write. And that, in very few words, is my excuse for writing Cemetery Polka and other stories from the dark side. Just as a hint, the picture to the left (in your mind, remove the title and the author) was taken at the “Poets’ Seat” in Greenfield, Massachusetts.

The idea for Cemetery Polka came after I wrote an article on the importance of a good title for an article or even a book. Cemetery Polka is actually a song by Tom Waits, and I used the title as an inspiration to write a short story.

And, finally, here is the unedited version of:

Cemetery Polka

An Excerpt from “Cemetery Polka And Other Stories From The Dark Side” by Wilfried F. Voss

The 18 feet long 1972 Winnebago Brave motor home came to a screeching hold at the traffic light on Flatbush Avenue. Pawel Jarecki set the directional light for a right turn into Kings Highway and, while waiting for the light to turn green, he nervously checked the engine’s cooling water temperature gauge. He had spent the entire weekend to get the engine fit for today’s trip, but had been unable to stop the leak in the radiator. Replacing the radiator was simply out of the question. That would eat up more than half of his monthly social security check.

A man’s gotta eat, he thought, wiping off the sweat from his forehead.

Instead he relied on a battery of twenty gallon-sized plastic milk containers neatly stored in the back of the Winnebago, all thoroughly cleaned and filled with a mixture of engine coolant and water. He had hoped for some colder weather, but it seemed that nature was not on his side. After all, it was November 1^st, All-Saints Day, which should be a guarantee for uncomfortable temperatures mixed with rain, but the sun had been shining all day, and it felt like springtime.

An angry driver behind him honked the horn, pulling him out of his thoughts. Pawel noticed the green light and slowly, much to the distress of the cars behind him, made the right turn.

He waved into the rear view mirror. “I am freaking seventy-eight years old,” he murmured to himself. “You guys just gotta suck it up.”

It was another two miles to their meeting point, the bus stop adjacent to the Casa Kielbasa. Everybody in town, especially those of Polish descent, knew “the Casa” as they called it. Good Polish food and excellent service. Lousy beer, though. Pawel didn’t care for American light beer in bottles.

Much to the relief of a growing number of drivers, he pulled the Winnebago over to the right into the bus stop where a large group of people seemed to be waiting for the next pick up. He stopped and looked around until he saw his old friend Josef Dabrowski waving, picking up his duffel bag and making his way toward the motor home.

“Hey there, Pawel,” Josef called out to him as he opened the passenger side door. He threw the duffel bag onto the bench in the kitchen area and then, very carefully, laid his leather clarinet case next to it.

“Where are Klaudia and Jakub?” Pawel asked him, concerned that something unforeseen might have happened.

“Oh, they’re at the grocery store down the road to get some sandwiches and soda.”

Pawel grunted. He didn’t like any unannounced changes.

We’re doing this for six years now, he thought angrily. We’re doing this every freaking All-Saints Day, and, by God, they had enough time to think about food and drinks.

But he didn’t say anything. Instead he pulled into the road, cutting off a white BMW. He looked into the rear view mirror to check for an extended middle finger, and he grinned. Sure enough, there it was.

Another mile down the road he pulled into the large parking lot of the local supermarket. They looked for their friends, Klaudia Malinowska and Jakub Chmielik, but couldn’t make them out and they decided to wait.

Pawel popped the motor hood and stepped out of the Winnebago, carrying a gallon of coolant water under his arm. He used some old boxer shorts, stained with oil and grease, to cover the radiator cap, and slowly started to turn it, careful not to get burned by the hot steam emerging from the top of the radiator.

“Do we have a problem?” he heard a voice behind him, and when he turned around he saw Klaudia watching him.

“No,” he told her. “She’s just getting old, just like us. And she needs some special care, just like us. And she needs a lot to drink…”

“Just like us,” Klaudia finished his sentence, laughing.

She held up a couple of plastic bags. “I got us some coolant, too,” she grinned. “Mainly coke and sprite.”

She winked, “And there’s some special for later in the night.”

“We’re all set then,” Pawel said, pouring the coolant into the radiator. He put the lid back on and used the rag to clean off the water he had spilled on the radiator and the rest of the engine. Then he followed Klaudia and Jakub, who were still busy storing their luggage and their instruments, an accordion and a saxophone.

“All aboard,” he yelled and looked in the mirror to check his passengers, who took their seats at the small kitchen table, ready to play some cards.

Pawel finally relaxed. They were on their way now. He had his ham and cheese sandwich and a cold soda. Who could ask for more?

They had another twenty miles to go, and it took another two refills of coolant before they arrived at Saint Stanislaus Cemetery. The sun had already begun to set. They left the Winnebago in the front parking lot and carried only their instruments and some plastic bags containing a few essentials for tonight’s event. Driving into the cemetery didn’t make sense. They would spend the night in the Winnebago, and they would not take any chances by driving home during dark, not to mention the inevitable consumption of good Polish vodka.

“Where exactly is Szymon’s grave?” Pawel asked, confused. Szymon Babka had died just a few months after their last visit, and on the day of the funeral Pawel had been in the hospital after a mild heart attack.

“You should know,” Klaudia looked at him disapprovingly. “He’s buried with his wife.”

Pawel felt foolish. Of course, he had seen Szymon’s wife’s grave every year during the past six years. Actually, seven years, he thought.

They all had met, just by chance, on All-Saints Day seven years ago. They all had tucked their small red lanterns in front of the gravestones, and lit a tea light inside, all this to honor their dead spouses. Over a cup of coffee in the nearby family restaurant they had agreed to meet again each year. Everything fell into place that afternoon. Szymon pitched the idea, and Pawel offered to use his Winnebago, and, as they say, the rest is history.

Ironically, it was also Szymon, just months before his demise, who came up with the idea of playing polka music.

“I don’t know about you guys,” he explained the idea, “but when I become one of the permanent residents here, I wouldn’t want to look at the long faces every time you come by.”

He grinned, “What do they say? Don’t mourn a death. Celebrate a life. I, for my part, would like some good polka music during my funeral.”

In the end he didn’t get his wish fulfilled. A funeral is for the living, and most of them were appalled by the thought of happy music during a funeral.

With Szymon now dead, this year was different than the previous ones. The old friends proceeded to his grave first, planted the lantern, lit the light, and said a prayer. Then they all went their own ways to visit their respective spouses, place the lantern, light the tea light, talk to the spouse, say a prayer, and wipe their eyes.

They assembled again, one by one emerging from the dark, at the small gazebo surrounded by the lawn in the center of the cemetery. Pawel had brought his camping gas lantern, which he put on the floor in the center of the gazebo. Not a word was spoken, and Klaudia produced the bottle of vodka and passed out shot glasses to everybody. Then she filled the glasses one by one, and when finished, they all saluted and gulped down the liquor.

Pawel set down on the bench, watching the others unpacking their instruments, Josef his clarinet, Jakub his saxophone, and Klaudia strapped on her accordion. Pawel had never had the chance to learn an instrument, but that didn’t bother him in the least. After all, he could sing, maybe not good, but definitely loud, and that was just good enough.

———————————–

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THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.