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The war in Afghanistan is over, the war in Iraq not yet begun, and V.I. Warshawski, along with the rest of America, is thoroughly exhausted. It is, as her doctor friend Lotty observes, an exhaustion of the spirit, not of the body, but to V.I. it hardly matters--she cannot sleep, she cannot concentrate, she is short-tempered and unhappy. So she seizes on the chance to do a little old-fashioned detective work when a valued client hires her to investigate his elderly mother's sightings of mysterious lights at a neighbouring mansion. Groping her way through the dark grounds of the estate, she first encounters a teenaged girl, who runs away. Chasing after her, V.I. trips and falls into a weed-choked pond. When she surfaces, she is holding the hand of a very dead young man who turns out to be Marcus Whitby, a journalist on the staff of a glossy African-American publication Whitby was writing a book about a now largely-forgotten but once prominent dancer and anthropologist who lost her teaching job in the 1950s thanks to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). His house has been burgled, his research notes are gone, and, despite the best efforts of the police to write off his death as suicide, foul play does seem to have occurred. Could he possibly have uncovered something in his investigations of events of almost fifty years ago to cause his murder? Can the young woman who fled the scene have anything to do with his death? In chasing down both sides of the story, V.I. finds herself having to untangle a complicated tale involving rich and powerful families, a right-wing politician famous for his zealotry in hounding Reds in the McCarthy period, and a frightened Arab boy who may or may not be a terrorist-in-training. Her investigation makes her no friends; indeed it threatens to lose her those she already has. In post-9/11, Patriot Act America, lines are sharply drawn and drawn as crudely as ever they were in the 1950s, and even V.I.šs beloved Lotty might pull away if she believes Vic is protecting a potential terrorist. Paretsky has always paid homage to the masters of noir fiction, while stubbornly and brilliantly taking the genre in new directions. BLACKLIST is no exception. Like her fictional forebears, V.I. is an alienated hero, but not because she is repelled by the failure of others to live up to her standards. On the contrary, she understands too well why they behave as they do and it breaks her heart. Unlike the white 50s liberals vividly resurrected in the book who believed their good will would melt racial barriers erected by centuries of history, Vic is saddened but unsurprised when her African-American clients shut her out and want to be with sisters in a time of sorrow. She is in an isolated and vulnerable state and has no one with whom she can check out her judgements. No wonder she begins to doubt herself. BLACKLIST is bound to be a controversial book, but there should be no argument over its merit. The parallels between the repression of the 1950s and the present moment are clearly present but not in a heavy-handed or programmatic kind of way. In a world in which absolute divisions between good and evil, us and them, seem more and more to characterize public discourse, V.I. Warshawski and her creator resolutely refuse to fall into line and follow the drum major.. BLACKLIST is a brave book and an important one. It is also, not so incidentally, true to its noir roots and an absorbing, satisfying read.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, June 2003
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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