Hardball by Sara Paretsky

Chicago politics past, present, and future take center stage in New York Times bestselling author Sara Paretsky s brilliant new V. I. Warshawski novel.Chicago s unique brand of ball is sixteen-inch slow pitch, played in leagues all over the city for more than a century. But in politics, in business, and in law enforcement, the game is hardball. When V. I. Warshawski is asked to find a man who s been missing for four decades, a search that she figured would be futile becomes lethal. Old skeletons from the city s racially charged history, as well as haunting family secrets her own and those of the elderly sisters who hired her rise up to brush her back from the plate with a vengeance. A young cousin whom she s never met arrives from Kansas City to work on a political campaign; a nun who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. dies without revealing crucial evidence; and on the city s South Side, people spit when she shows up. Afraid to learn that her adored father might have been a bent cop, V. I. still takes the investigation all the way to its frightening end.