Review: Blacklisted by Sara Paretsky
It is normally so witty, funny, entertaining, fast paced VI Warshawski may Blacklisted be content to enter into a much more mediocre shape.
Warshawski is hired by a rich man who wants her to go and investigate a strange light that his murder was seen in an abandoned house. She was going there, but all she finds is a corpse who has drowned in garden pond. The corpse is identified as Marcus Whitby, a black man who has achieved great journalistic successes.
The combination: rich area - dead black man makes the police quickly remove the case as a suicide and puts it thus to the documents. Whitbys sister fails, however, not content with that, but she asks VI Warshawski to go to the bottom of the case. It soon appears that the residents in and around the area where Whitby drowned holds many secrets. Secrets which could not be revealed. Secret, if necessary, protected by death.
Blacklisted is the eleventh book of VI Warshawski, and I tend to normally be quite lyrical when I keep a book of Paretsky in his hand. I really wish I had been there again this time. But, unfortunately, she reaches this time not all the way.
The beginning is really good where Paretsky build an interest and an excitement that encourages the reader to constantly find out more. After that the corpse found, however, something happens and the plot loses all momentum. Warshawski rushing hither, thither, in his desperate hunt for clues and the people who want to talk to her. She faced all the time on patrol and then when her original employer orders her to complete its investigation is frustration a fact. And it is just frustration that stops up the pace of the book. When she gets frustrated, she takes a jog, lies down in the bathtub, going down to his neighbor Mr. Contreras to talk of himself, etc. None of these parties, the action forward and thus the plot of the relatively long passages tougher than chewing gum.
What Paretsky however succeed really well with the conformation and environment descriptions. But then the plot is uneventful it is not enough to give it a passing grade.
Cult Facts: Blacklisted received a Gold Dagger Award for best crime novel 2004th
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Bokfakta
Author: Sara Paretsky
Original title: Blacklist
Year: 2003
Publisher: Ordfront Pocket
Translator: Ulf Gyllenhak
Number of pages: 462 
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