Hard Time by Sara Paretsky

Among the first, and perhaps the most compelling, female private investigators of contemporary fiction, Sara Paretsky’s incomparable character V I Warshawski at last returns to the page in her first full-length appearance since 1994’s Tunnel Vision. Hard Time is the work of a master–a riveting novel of suspense that is indisputably Paretsky’s best V I Warshawski novel yet.  Multimedia conglomerate Global Entertainment has purchased the Chicago Herald-Star, forcing the paper’s staff to scramble to stay employed. Reporter Murray Ryerson, V I’s longtime friend and sometime rival, manages to reinvent himself as the host of a television show on Global’s network. On her way home from a party celebrating Murray’s debut, V I almost runs over a woman lying in the street. Stopping to help, V I soon learns that her Good Samaritan act will drop her squarely in a boiling intrigue.  In a case that forces her to go head-to-head with one of the world’s largest providers of private security and prison services, a case that exposes dark hidden truths behind the razzle-dazzle of the entertainment industry, V I will be ahead of the game if she gets out alive.