My Weekly Book

Blacklist - Sara Paretsky

It helps when reading this book to remember that its author has degrees from the University of Chicago in history and political science. Not much to do with writing detective novels, you might argue. Well, that’s rather the point. While this story certainly has a mystery narrative at its heart, that’s not really all it’s about and that’s where the history and political science come in.

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Blacklist is a murky old book – from the minute that VI tumbles accidentally into the foetid pond of a country house that appears to have mysterious night visitors and finds a corpse floating there. It’s a detailed fictional examination of what it meant to have progressive views in America during the McCarthy era and how that’s reflected in the Patriot Act and its enforcement today. It shines a spotlight on the issues facing Chicago’s black community, in the same way that Fire Sale focused on its Hispanic inhabitants and Total Recall on its Jewish immigrants. The narrative is a complex and densely-woven mixture of PI procedural, political polemic and a three-generational family saga involving the dirty laundry of some of the city’s richest inhabitants. This is all handled with assurance, and at times it makes for damned uncomfortable reading.

The story’s as gripping and skilfully-woven as ever. But VI’s not in a good place herself what with Morrell off in Afghanistan, out of touch for all practical purposes, and her illusions about a hero of her youth taking a very serious knock. Forget any idea that America is a country even close to achieving racial equality. And many of the people she moves among for this investigation are just damned unpleasant. Their actions in the past were unpleasant, and so is their behaviour now. Towards the end she says:”I spent a long time under the shower myself, trying to stop my skin from feeling as if it was turning inside-out” and frankly I felt a bit like that just reading about these characters. Accomplished, angry, thought-provoking, challenging, so much more than just another detective novel. But not particularly easy or comfortable reading. Choose this if you need to be stimulated, not soothed.

Some links:

• Readers’ Room webchat: Sara Paretsky
• Review of Blacklist (includes plot details)
• Center for American Progress: Literary Dissent by Sara Paretsky (includes plot details)
• SaraParetsky.com: Blacklist
• ShotsMag author profile (concentrates on Fire Sale more than Blacklist but, hey, it’s a good read…)
• Answers.com: Sara Paretsky

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 at 3:29 pm and is filed under 2007 reading challenge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.