Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Paretsky always gives you a book to challenge the mind to find the links and the red herrings. This book is no different.
A complex story of betrayal and love and murder and theft and relics and war and museums and academia.
I wasn't sure however, about the poetry included - but then it wasn't my type of poetry - I'm more a Shakespearian Sonnet person.

If you don't want to think about the destruction and looting of the wars in the Middle East and how much cultural history we have lost then be careful, This book will fill you with grief. So much has been lost to us through carelessness, greed and religious dogma.
So another layer to the story that adds to the emotions experienced.

Unfortunately I really struggled with this, I have always loved the VI Warshawski novels, but found this one a little disjointed and hard to get into.

Sara Paretsky, Shell Game 2018 HarperCollins
The longevity of series writers never ceases to have its moments, and Sara Paretsky’s characters certainly have some magic about their resistance to aging: this is the 19th V.I. Warshawski novel, and the latest of her adventures. It’s also far from the first time I read one of her novels, which have had their ups and downs. Warshawski first appeared in 1982, a feisty left-wing Private Investigator and recovering lawyer, going down Chicago’s mean streets like other P.I.s who are not themselves mean, with a recognizable combination of intelligence and imagination; courage and physical fitness; local knowledge and tenacity. What is hard to recall now is the effect of rewriting the old American scenario with a woman at the centre, a highly-educated Chicagoan with deep roots in the city’s old-immigrant Catholic community. On the other hand, Lotty Herschel and her family are (mainly) doctors in community service. Mr Contreras still lives downstairs, still takes the dogs for exercise, and still tells V.I. what’s up.
Paretsky was a pioneer. She is not the dysfunctional self-abusing Private Eye of legend, and her drinking is well under control. Over the years V.I.’s background, family, and friends have done something to fill out her temper and disappointments in love. She keeps any number of balls in the air. In this book one of her nieces has disappeared and the other one has come to V. I. for help.
So Warshawski is not the dysfunctional self-abusing Private Eye of legend, and her drinking is well under control. She has family, she has friends, and the respect of many of her long-serving clients. Over the years V.I.’s family and friends have done what they could to fill out her temper and disappointments in love. American P.I.’s are seldom celebrated for their steady relationships and child-rearing success, but for a woman raised in Catholic South Chicago, there are constant humiliations in being repeatedly told that she will never be able to hold a man. Although, like many of her ilk, she has suffered physical punishments which would have scarred and crippled a lesser mmm person, she still scrubs up well enough to attract attention. There are men in her life, but her life is not the motor of the novels: the important developments arise from fashions within crime fiction, themselves reacting to changes social, political, and criminal.
Like many other crime writers, Paretsky began with innovative imitation. Her female P.I. was a lawyer disillusioned with the corruptions of the Chicago police and criminal justice system, autonomous, and with a vision of social justice which distinguished her from the male Private Dicks’ characteristically idiosyncratic morality. And there is no question but that she knows a lot about corruption in the Second City. V. I. Warshawski is nominally a specialist in financial fraud, but there is not a lot of techno-wizardry in her old-fashioned shoe-leather hunt for criminals. For a while the novels veered between familiar kinds of series plots and ambitions to treat social issues of moment in Chicago, and elsewhere in the U.S., though after a time they began to seem tired, especially as other writers in turn imitated and innovated upon Paretsky’s breakthrough. Then, with Tunnel Vision (1994), and Hard Time (1999) that original fire returned, with a thriller-like concern for money, power, and political corruption. This novel is her at her lightning best, and it assumes that readers accept the every-young characters who reappear in every book. Shell Game has her strengths full-on. One of them is what crime writers do so well: in the first few pages we meet the DACA kids—those are the children brought illegally into the United States. These allusions have filled any number of Paretsky’s books, and we are the more grateful for her work in telling her readers something about the U.S. now. She writes of neighbourhoods that are nervous when white people who might be immigration officers seem to be on surveillance. There’s more than a nod at the forests into which V.I. and Lotty’s nephew find themselves called by the police. V.I. reflects, ‘I felt a flush of shame, shame that I was inspecting people as if they were specimens, shame that my government could create such fear in people.’
Paretsky has never been afraid of implausibilities, and this novel has its share. In the world of crime fiction, she exploits the double-time scheme in which the years pass but the characters remain more or less static. Warshawski herself remains the familiar hot-tempered maverick. She was that kind of internal migrant whose education has lifted her from her social origins, with all the discomfort--but none of the confusion--that that so often creates. Unlike so many of crime fiction’s socially challenged male P.I.s, she is rooted in a social web. Not only has Paretsky evoked--and celebrated--the multiplicity of Chicago’s neighbourhoods, its old and new immigrants, its essential tragedy of race relations, but these years of America’s financial and political decadence have rekindled her passion for social justice with a vengeance. More positively, the socially mobile Warshawski belongs to that American dream also exemplified by the Obamas--but, as becomes the woman who is not herself mean, Warshawski remains dissident, and as tough on the causes of crime as she is on criminals.

I've read Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski's books before so was very excited to read this book. I was definitely not disappointed! This is a super book, full of twists and turns, politics, gritty action and a fantastic strong female lead. If you've read these books before, you will love this one. If you haven't then this one is a great place to start as the plot is standalone and stand-out good and will have you reaching for the back catalogue. Really excellent.

Sarah Paretsky was the first modern crime writer that I read and her writing has only improved over time. Her detective V.I. Warshawski is a gutsy lawyer who throws her self physically and mentally into her cases. In this book she is juggling two family cases on top of her usual paid work. They merge into a case of murder, torture, and the theft of Syrian antiquities- among other things.

Loved it.

I have read (almost) all of Sara Paretsky’s VI Warshawski novels and love them. The central character always has me laughing, smiling and holding my breath from fear and in awe. Not only that, the author manages to encompass up-to-date storylines and information so nothing seems dated or jaded.

This time VI is in Chicago because an old friend’s nephew has been arrested for murder. As usual nothing is as straightforward as it should be and before long VI is tangled up with the Russian mob, ISIS backers and some sort of stock scam. It’s always good to become reacquainted with characters from the previous novels and this made it even more entertaining.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Hodder & Stoughton and Sara Paretsky for my ARC in return for my honest review.

Another excellent read from this author. Highly recommended.

A Sarah Paretsky never lets the reader down. Shell Games is an interesting story, A..V.I. Warshawski finds herself in a difficult situation, but she has never been one to turn her back on trouble. Her ex husband ‘s niece contacts her. Her twin sister has disappeared after a business trip with a loan company she is working for. At the same time her friends nephew also goes missing. Are these disappearances anything to do with artifacts from an ancient dig in Syria? V.I using legal and not too legal methods gets to the bottom of the problems. A really well crafted story.

I’ve been a massive fan of Sara Paretsky and her wonderful female PI, VI Warshawski, ever since the books started to be published in the early 1980s which meant I was incredibly excited to receive a review copy of her new novel, Shell Game, from NetGalley.
I wasn’t disappointed as this new episode in VI’s life is every bit as exciting and intriguing as her earlier adventures.
She hasn’t changed much over the years! It has been 35 years since the first novel but Vic is still full of energy and seems to get into one scrape after another. I’m not sure how old she is meant to be but I am quite happy to suspend belief. Surely she can’t be fighting off baddies and chasing around Chicago in her sixties!
When this series was first published there were very few female detectives so she really was a trail blazer and it would be worth reading the earlier novels written in the 1980s if you haven’t come across her before.
This novel is bang up to date with Ms Paretsky using the narrative to comment about the current situation in the US, in particular the way immigrants are treated by the current regime.
Vic is tasked with helping her old friend Lottie’s nephew, Felix, who is implicated in a murder although he claims he had nothing to do with it.
Meanwhile her ex husband’s niece Harmony appears looking for her sister Reno who has gone missing in Chicago.
Vic has to juggle both these family jobs whilst trying to earn some money from her paying clients.
She discovers all sorts of financial skulduggery as well as a plot involving looted Syrian artefacts.
Characters from the earlier novels all make an appearance including her elderly neighbour, Mr Contreras, Murray, the reporter and of course Lottie, her doctor friend and confidant who must be in her 90s now and is still working as a doctor!,
This is a very enjoyable book- it was great for me to catch up with all my favourite characters. Vic is as feisty as ever and makes for a wonderful lead protagonist. As the book is written in the first person the reader gets to hear all of her thoughts as soon as she has them.
I found the financial irregularities Vic discovers slightly complicated but this didn’t really matter.
A great read for me and now I’m looking for to VI’s next outing. I hope it won’t be too long to wait!

Oh Vic, how we need you in today's world! With her usual tough-girl-with-a-big-heart way, Vic negotiates two cases involving a missing young woman, and a trade in Syrian artefacts. All the standard characters are present and correct, and Vic never lets up till she reaches the end. With a courageous, wholly admirable yet never clichéd central character and a fluent just-one-more-chapter style, this is a winner.

Shell Game by Sarah Paretsky was a real pageturner, however... all these things happening to her in a two-week period... it was all a bit much. Not to say, tiring to read the men that kept breaking into houses, jumping at people in the park. But like I said: a pageturner, one that I did enjoy reading!

I thought Shell Game was very good. I enjoyed Sara Paretsky’s early books but I haven’t read one for many years. I’m pleased to say that she’s still as good as ever.

Here, Vic is drawn into two apparently separate investigations involving friends and family as a young great-nephew of a close friend is suspected of murder while a niece (sort of – it’s complicated) comes to her because her sister has vanished. A complex plot develops involving stolen Middle Eastern artefacts, corporate malfeasance, Russian mobsters, Vic getting knocked about...well, it’s classic Paretsky. There is a monumental coincidence at its heart, but it hangs together well and makes an exciting and involving read.

Paretsky uses her very well-drawn characters to cast light on the present-day USA, with a convincing picture of the increasing, mindless conflation of “muslim” and even “immigrant” with “terroroist,” and some sharp stabs at the current political situation in general. Some are a little crude, but for the most part she gives an intelligent critique and creates a very convincing atmosphere.

Shell Game shows that Sara Paretsky deserves her place in the pantheon of great contemporary crime writers and that she is writing as well as ever. I enjoyed it very much and I can recommend it warmly.

(My thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for an ARC via NetGalley.)

I'm a long term Sara Paretsky and V.I Warshawski fan. I don't really understand why she's not more widely read in the uk. If you want a current, fresh, exciting, feminist detective adventure look no further. That said, it may be time to freshen up the tortured soul, rescued by V.I and Mr Contreras against the evil capitalists foothills (just don't kill anyone off please).

I would like to thank Netgalley and Hodder and Stoughton for an advance copy of Shell Game, the nineteenth novel to feature Chicago based PI V.I. Warshawski.

Vic's friend, Lottie Herschel, asks her to accompany her great nephew, Felix, to identify a dead body whom the police are certain he will know. Felix doesn't recognise the body but is so secretive the police line him up as the prime suspect. Preoccupied as she is with Felix and his problems she can't help but say yes when Harmony, her niece by marriage asks for help in finding her sister, Reno, who has disappeared. Both cases eventually end up intertwined.

I thoroughly enjoyed Shell Game. It is a while since I spent time with Vic (after so many novels she's like a friend and that's what friends call her) but she seems undimmed. With a straightforward first person narrative it is easy to get to know her as she is free with her thoughts, deductions and emotions. She's not always likeable, being self righteous at times and very sure of herself, but she's honest, principled and unafraid to put herself in danger if the cause is just. Would that we could all measure up to her standards. Nevertheless she is a hero for our times.

The plot is excellent and I couldn't read fast enough to see what was coming next. It is quite complicated in parts and I freely admit that some of the financial fraud detail went right over my head, but the gist is clear and while it's shocking to see it laid bare it's actually unsurprising as it seems a way of life in some circles. Ms Paretsky is never one to shy away from current social problems so immigration, financial fraud, payday loans and artefact smuggling all get a reference. Again, her bald delivery makes it shocking but unsurprising reading. While these issues are at the root of the novel they are not the be all and end all as there is a great story in there as well. There is action, danger, thrills, betrayal, lies and tension as Vic navigates her way towards the truth.

Shell Game is a great read which I have no hesitation in recommending.

I love this series and was looking forward to this latest book ……………. and what a book - it is BRILLIANT from cover to cover .

Vi Warshawski is asked by her mentor and friend Lottie Herschel to help her great-nephew who is suspected of murdering a Syrian immigrant …………… the police seem to be concentrating their efforts on only him and she fears for his safety .
At the same time her ex husband's niece , Harmony ,who she hasn't seen for many years , arrives in Chicago to ask for help in location her sister , Reno , who has gone missing .
As Vic uses all her PI skills to find her niece she finds obstacles at every turn ……….. who is lying to her , who is covering up the truth ? The search is becoming more dangerous as both Vi and and Harmony are attacked …. by whom and why ?
Amongst all this she is also trying to help Lottie's nephew keep one step ahead of being arrested by the police - although he is doing little to help himself - quite the contrary .
It eventually becomes evident that the two cases are linked and there are ties to different dangerous organisations who will kill to keep their secrets .
Her investigation takes her all the way to Minnesota and Canada as she tries to save the people she's been asked to find and protect, pitting her against a powerful crime boss from Chicago .
The book is fast paced , unrelenting, and Vic's life is in danger many times before all is resolved .

I loved this book and hope there is more to come from Vi' PI cases .

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own

I was utterly thrilled to be reading the latest in Sara Paretsky's iconic V.I. Warshawski series set in a Chicago that, by now, I feel I know rather well. Paretsky writes more than crime fiction, she captures the current social and political waters of the US, as can be seen here where the horror of the repercussions of the Trump presidency is laid bare with its impact on the poor, the migrants and refugees, living in fear, and the draconian and hostile environment they face on a daily basis. This is in stark contrast to the world of the hyperwealthy, and their inherent perception that the law does not apply to them and the unabashed, shameful corporate debauchery that takes place, powerful men preying on young and vulnerable women, mirroring the contemporary#MeToo era. The indomitable Vic has come to the aid of Felix Herschel, grandson of Lotty's brother, Hugo. In the forests of Cap Sauers Holding, the beaten to death body of a man is found stuffed into a tree. The man has a torn scrap of paper with Felix's name and phone number on his person, and the local sheriff is hellbent on arresting and charging Felix with murder on this basis.

Vic's niece, Harmony Seale has arrived in Chicago looking for her sister, Reno, who has disappeared. The good looking Reno had obtained work for a payday loan company charging astronomical interest rates of the struggling poor, doing well, she was invited to a corporate shindig in the Caribbean which turned out to be a nightmare. Harmony and Reno had a troubled upbringing with their drug addict mother, Peggy, and placed with foster parents that were the making of them, but they both remain emotionally fragile and vulnerable. The overworked and exhausted Vic finds leads which reveal stolen artefacts from war torn Syria, connections to the Oriental Institute and a cleaning company, Force 5, employing migrant labour. Felix is being distinctly unhelpful and Vic's ex-husband, the ambitious Dick, shows just how few scruples he has and just how much of a nasty piece of work he is. Homeland Security and ICE agents are muscling in on other people's turf with no compunction. In the face of being assaulted, shot at, the menacing presence of the Russian Mob and with her clients in desperate danger, Vic finds surprising links with Reno's disappearance with that of the murder in the woods of Cap Sauer.

A host of characters reappear that will be familiar to fans of series, such as the over protective elderly Mr Contreras, the wintry yet helpful client Darraugh Graham, reporter Murray Ryerson, computer genius Niko Cruickshank, not to mention the heroic dogs, Peppy and Mitch. Paretsky's Vic is a phenomenon, fighting tirelessly for justice in a world where the odds are stacked against her, in a political climate that has become increasingly surreal and unbearably dangerous to those at the bottom of the ladder, powerless and living precarious lives. We are given a picture of the US with its recent history of ill advised foreign ventures and their impact. Always a joy to reacquaint myself with the force of nature that is Vic and know that she continues to survive, holding on to her principles and values, loyal to those close to her, even when they not always appreciative of her help. Love this series with a passion, and this marvellous addition comes highly recommended. Many thanks to Hodder and Stoughton for an ARC.