VI Warshawski is in Lawrence, Kansas to support a flatmate of her French-Canadian friend, who is about to break some sort of scoring record in a basketball game. One of the young women in the group visiting from Chicago vanishes after the game, and Warshawski stays on to look for her. This brings her into conflict with various town worthies, which in turn leads to her stumbling across the disappearance of a young woman who managed to offend the town’s most prominent families.

It all goes back to the American Civil War, and the influx of abolitionists into Kansas, many of whom, it transpires, were not as liberal as their descendants claimed. It’s about a derelict house from the 1800s which can’t be demolished as it’s historically important, has more recently been used for drug-fuelled parties by over-titled frat boys from the nearby university, and is where Warshawski finds the missing young woman. And, a day later, a murdered woman.

Confusing matters, or perhaps related to them, is the construction site on a hilltop near the house. The company that now owns the lands is allegedly building a tourist resort, but from what Warshawski sees of the site that doesn’t seem plausible. A nearby decommissioned coal power station is about to begin generating power again (and the manager of the power station was murdered only a few weeks before).

There are two plots in Pay Dirt (2024, USA), which intertwine. The missing woman had proof a white family had stolen ownership of the hilltop from a black family in the mid-1800s. Then there’s the purpose behind the construction work on the hilltop, and the recommissioning of the old power station, which leads back to a billionaire family – clearly inspired by the Koch brothers – and their industrial empire…

As ever, Warshawski wears her politics on her sleeve, and consequently makes more enemies than friends. There’s mention of Covid and its impact, and social media plays a role in the plot – although Paretsky misses a trick when she reveals the real purpose of the hilltop site, revealing it’s for tech that was slightly news-worthy ten years ago where as there’s one that has been definitely more news-worthy the last couple of years.

Paretsky has not lost her touch. She can still generate anger – from those who agree with her at the injustices she documents, and from those who disagree with her for casting their views in an unflattering light. If anything, she’s more incandescent now than she used to be, and now I think about it her books seem to have moved from legal injustice to include political injustice and then social injustice. 

Paretsky was one of the original “Sisters in Crime” back in the 1980s, a group of female crime authors – including Sue Grafton and Linda Barnes – who set out to write female-authored and female-led crime and mystery novels. Obviously, they succeeded – in fact, I think female crime writers now outnumber male ones (female readers certainly outnumber male). She is still worth reading.