Sara Paretsky: Brush Back, 9780399160578, hardback, Putnam, Penguin Random House US, (paperback: June 2015)

I have been following Sarah Paretsky and her heroine V.I. Warshawski for quite a while now, almost from book one.  The Chicago setting of her thrillers, one of my favorite towns, appeal to me as does the character of gutsy, headstrong female private eye VI Warshawski.  It is always like a trip to Chicago without leaving home.

In her latest book VI has aged, is around fifty now, with musician gentleman friend Jake living next door, her wonderful old neighbor Mr. Contreras still looking after her and her dogs plus a houseguest, Bernie, Boom-Boom’s goddaughter, living with her for the summer.

Starting to feel that climbing walls and chasing the bad guys is not quite as easy physically and appealing as it used to be, VI is not quite as confrontational as in previous novels. When her old high school flame Frank Guzzo shows up in her office asking for her help to exonerate his mother  after her release from prison, where she did 25 years being accused of murdering her daughter Annie, unpleasant memories and feelings from VI’s past of  growing up in Chicago’s dangerous South side resurface.  She has little desire to revisit these wounds but feels obliged to help her old friend.   When she reluctantly starts her investigation by asking Frank’s mother Stella some unwelcome questions,  Stella answers by becoming physically violent, making it hard for VI to believe in Stella’s innocence and easy to walk out of the case. When the Guzzo family starts slandering the image of VI’s beloved cousin and famous baseball player Boom-Boom on the basis of a supposedly recently discovered  diary of the murdered Annie, VI is upset enough that reopening the investigation seems the only way forward.  During the course of 458 pages,  VI unravels several buried family secrets, tries to find her way through a spider web of shady connections and discoveries,  gets beaten up by gangsters when confronting crooked Chicago politicians, lawyers and business men seriously endangering her and Bernie’s life towards the end of the book.

Although the book is very long, I did not feel bored, enough new worms crawl out of the can to keep you entertained until the very end.  I did feel the story could have been more compressed but all in all, Paretsky and VI Warshawski as we like her ! 

Hong Ying: The Concubine of Shanghai, 9780241950678, Penguin Books

With the skies offering only every shade of grey, pouring rain to top it, I headed for my book pile and picked up Hong Ying’s “The Concubine of Shanghai” (Die Konkubine von Shanghai), wanting just to be entertained.  I confess a weakness for novels dealing with the old China which started in my teens with Pearl S Buck.  “Concubine of Shanghai” has been sitting on my growing book pile for some time; Penguin published the translation in 2013. Hong Ying is best known for “K: The Art of Love” (Die chinesische Geliebte) which won the Prix de Rome in 2005 and was made into a film.  Hong Ying has also written an autobiography.

If you enjoy Amy Tan, Hong Ying is a good alternative, an accomplished, excellent writer in my view and a great historical storyteller, laced with some erotic elements. 

The criticism I have: this book is very long, nearly 400 pages but the story is full of interesting characters to stick with it. 

China 1907, the orphan Cassia is sold by her aunt and uncle into a Shanghai brothel run by Madame Emerald, a key character in Cassia’s future life. Her feet are unbound making her unattractive to work as a prostitute; she ends up working as a lowly maid.  Her fate changes when Master Chang, the boss of the Brotherhood, one of the Shanghai Triads, sees something different in her, awakening more than just sexual interest in him. Her intelligence and self-assuredness turn her into his most trusted alley and his favorite mistress. The violent times in Shanghai at the beginning of the century cast a shadow on Cassia’s love and happiness.  Relying on all her resources, fate forces her to reinvent herself over and over again, finally becoming one of the most prominent singers and talked about women in Shanghai during her days. 

The book has many twists and turns, interesting characters, such as her lovers Yu and Huang Peiyu or Madame Emerald,  in my view the ending was a bit disappointing and during the second half of the book, the plot showed some weaknesses.