Critical Mass - Abridged
V. I. Warshawski Series: Book #16
- By: Sara Paretsky
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 17 hours 23 minutes
Description
The brilliant V. I. Warshawski returns in another hard-hitting entry, combining razor-sharp plotting and compelling characters with a heady mix of timely political and social themes.
“Both Paretsky and the sharp-tongued justice-seeker, V. I. Warshawski, remain formidable.... V. I. reigns as crime fiction’s spiky, headstrong warrior woman of conscience, and Paretsky, classy champion of the powerless, has never been more imaginative, rueful, transfixing, and righteous.” —Booklist (starred review)
V. I. Warshawski’s closest friend in Chicago is the Viennese-born doctor Lotty Herschel, who lost most of her family in the Holocaust. Lotty escaped to London in 1939 on the Kindertransport with a childhood playmate, Kitty Saginor Binder. When Kitty’s daughter finds her life is in danger, she calls Lotty, who in turn summons V. I. to help. The daughter’s troubles turn out to be just the tip of an iceberg of lies, secrets, and silence, whose origins go back to the mad competition among America, Germany, Japan, and England to develop the first atomic bomb. The secrets are old, but the people who continue to guard them today will not let go without a fight.
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V. I. Warshawski Series Series

Indemnity Only
By: Sara Paretsky
Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
Length: 8 hours 43 minutes
Abridged: No
In this gripping adventure — the first V.I. Warshawski mystery — America’s top private eye is tossed into a dangerous adventure when a seemingly straightforward assignment becomes complicated and deadly. Hired by a man who calls himself John Thayer, V.I.’s assignment is to find Thayer’s son Peter’s missing girlfriend. But when V.I. Finds young... Read more »
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Deadlock
By: Sara Paretsky
Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
Length: 10 hours 28 minutes
Abridged: No
Deadlock, V. I. Warshawski’s second case, involves the huge Great Lakes shipping industry. Once again the subject is murder — this time the “accidental death” of Boom-Boom Warshawski, an ex-hockey star and V. I.’s beloved cousin, who fell — or was pushed — off a rain-slicked pier on Chicago’s busy waterfront. Convinced that Boom-Boom was in fact... Read more »
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Killing Orders
By: Sara Paretsky
Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
Length: 9 hours 43 minutes
Abridged: No
Killing Orders, V.I. Warshawski’s third adventure, starts when her great-aunt Rosa summons the detective to her cold suburban home. Rosa made V.I.’s childhood miserable and the detective resents the command to help her aunt prove she didn't embezzle five million dollars from a local Dominican priory. All hell breaks loose when a mysterious... Read more »
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Bitter Medicine - Abridged
By: Sara Paretsky
Narrated by: Sandra Burr
Length: 6 hours 8 minutes
Abridged: Yes
Chicago private eye V. I. Warshawski knows from the start that Consuelo Alvarado's baby is trouble. Consuelo is sixteen. Diabetic. And the daughter of a friend. When she goes into labor too early, even V. I.'s wild drive to get her to the hospital can't save either Consuelo or her child. Soon V. I. is investigating possible malpractice at the... Read more »
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Bitter Medicine
By: Sara Paretsky
Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
Length: 9 hours 46 minutes
Abridged: No
Chicago private eye V.I. Warshawski knows from the start that Consuelo Alvarado's baby is trouble. Consuelo is sixteen. Diabetic. And the daughter of a friend. When she goes into labor too early, even V. I.'s wild drive to get her to the hospital can't save either Consuelo or her child. Soon V.I. is investigating possible malpractice at the... Read more »
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Blood Shot
By: Sara Paretsky
Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
Length: 12 hours 40 minutes
Abridged: No
V.I. Warshawski isn't crazy about going back to her old south Chicago neighborhood, but a promise is something she always keeps. Caroline, a childhood friend, has a dying mother and a problem -- after twenty-five years she wants V.I. to find the father she never knew. But when V.I. starts probing into the past, she not only finds out where all... Read more »
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Burn Marks
By: Sara Paretsky
Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
Length: 13 hours 58 minutes
Abridged: No
“Victoria, sweetie, you look terrific!”
With those words—and the sour yeasty smell of stale beer—Elena, V.I. Warshawski’s derelict aunt, re-enters her niece’s life at three in the morning. Burned out of her SRO hotel, Elena has turned to V.I. for a place to stay. V.I. vows that it will be a short visit and uses some old political contacts to... Read more »
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Guardian Angel
By: Sara Paretsky
Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
Length: 14 hours 50 minutes
Abridged: No
When a neighboring eighty-year-old dog owner turns up floating facedown in a canal shortly after an argument with a yuppie couple, V. I. Warshawski begins an investigation.
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Tunnel Vision
By: Sara Paretsky
Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
Length: 17 hours 23 minutes
Abridged: No
Stubbornness has landed private eye V.I. Warshawski in big trouble at her Chicago office. With her grand old Loop building set to be razed, she's become a hold-out tenant amid frayed wiring and scary, empty corridors. Then she finds a homeless woman with three kids in the basement, and before she can rescue them, they disappear. Worst of all,... Read more »
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Total Recall
By: Sara Paretsky
Narrated by: Sandra Burr
Length: 15 hours 52 minutes
Abridged: No
The bestselling V.I. Warshawski novels have dazzled readers and earned the acclaim of critics everywhere. “V.I. Warshawski rules,” writes Newsweek, crowning her “the most engaging woman in detective fiction.” Of V.I.’s creator, the Chicago Tribune says “Sara Paretsky has no peer.”
Now Paretsky brings her incomparable storytelling brilliance to... Read more »
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Blacklist
By: Sara Paretsky
Narrated by: Sandra Burr
Length: 15 hours 37 minutes
Abridged: No
V. I. Warshawski explores secrets and betrayals that stretch across four generations in this New York Times bestselling novel from one of the most compelling writers in American crime fiction...
“A thoughtful, high-tension mystery.”—The Washington Post Book World
“A genuinely exciting and disturbing thriller.”—Chicago Tribune
As a favor to her most... Read more »
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Fire Sale
By: Sara Paretsky
Narrated by: Sandra Burr
Length: 14 hours 37 minutes
Abridged: No
V. I. Warshawski may have left her old South Chicago neighborhood, but she learns that she cannot escape it. When V. I. takes over coaching duties of the girls’ basketball team at her former high school, she faces an ill-equipped, ragtag group of gangbangers, fundamentalists, and teenage moms, who inevitably draw the detective into their family... Read more »
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Hardball
By: Sara Paretsky
Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
Length: 14 hours 38 minutes
Abridged: No
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 Lamont Gadsden, a man who’s been missing for four decades, a search that she figured would be futile turns... Read more »
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Body Work - Abridged
By: Sara Paretsky
Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
Length: 7 hours 23 minutes
Abridged: Yes
“The thing about Sara Paretsky is, she’s tough—not because she observes the bone-breaker conventions of the private-eye genre but because she doesn’t flinch from examining old social injustices others might find too shameful (and too painful) to dig up.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Doctors take days off—why not PIs?” V.I. Warshawski demands.... Read more »
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Body Work
By: Sara Paretsky
Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
Length: 15 hours 54 minutes
Abridged: No
“The thing about Sara Paretsky is, she’s tough—not because she observes the bone-breaker conventions of the private-eye genre but because she doesn’t flinch from examining old social injustices others might find too shameful (and too painful) to dig up.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Doctors take days off—why not PIs?” V.I. Warshawski demands.... Read more »
Learn more
Breakdown - Abridged
By: Sara Paretsky
Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
Length: 5 hours 57 minutes
Abridged: Yes
A strange crime gets V.I. Warshawski involved with some of Chicago’s most rich and powerful players in this thriller from New York Times bestselling author Sara Paretsky.
When a group of Chicago tweens holds a ritual in an abandoned cemetery, they stumble on an actual corpse—stabbed through the heart in a vampire-style slaying. V.I. Warshawski... Read more »
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Breakdown
By: Sara Paretsky
Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
Length: 14 hours 53 minutes
Abridged: No
A strange crime gets V.I. Warshawski involved with some of Chicago’s most rich and powerful players in this thriller from New York Times bestselling author Sara Paretsky.
When a group of Chicago tweens holds a ritual in an abandoned cemetery, they stumble on an actual corpse—stabbed through the heart in a vampire-style slaying. V.I. Warshawski... Read more »
Learn more
Critical Mass
By: Sara Paretsky
Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
Length: 17 hours 23 minutes
Abridged: No
The brilliant V. I. Warshawski returns in another hard-hitting entry, combining razor-sharp plotting and compelling characters with a heady mix of timely political and social themes. “Both Paretsky and the sharp-tongued justice-seeker, V. I. Warshawski, remain formidable. . . . V. I. reigns as crime fiction’s spiky, headstrong warrior woman of... Read more »
Learn more
Critical Mass - Abridged
By: Sara Paretsky
Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
Length: 17 hours 23 minutes
Abridged: Yes
The brilliant V. I. Warshawski returns in another hard-hitting entry, combining razor-sharp plotting and compelling characters with a heady mix of timely political and social themes.
“Both Paretsky and the sharp-tongued justice-seeker, V. I. Warshawski, remain formidable.... V. I. reigns as crime fiction’s spiky, headstrong warrior woman of... Read more »
Learn more
Brush Back
By: Sara Paretsky
Narrated by: Karen Peakes
Length: 13 hours
Abridged: No
Chicago’s V. I. Warshawski confronts crooked politicians and buried family secrets in the gritty new novel from New York Times–bestselling author Sara Paretsky.
No one would accuse V. I. Warshawski of backing down from a fight, but there are a few she’d be happy to avoid. High on that list is tangling with Chicago political bosses. Yet that’s... Read more »
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Windy City Blues
By: Sara Paretsky
Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
Length: 9 hours 35 minutes
Abridged: No
It’s strictly Friends & Family as V.I. Warshawski, “the detective mystery fans have been waiting for” (Time), makes return appearances in a collection of stories that bring new meaning to “ties that bind.” Decked out in her silk shirts and no-nonsense attitude, V.I. is out to make a living—by the skin of her teeth.
In “Grace Notes,” V.I. has... Read more »
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