Overboard

Paretsky’s 22nd book (after Dead Land) in the “V.I. Warshawski” series opens with a horrific discovery. Mitch and Peppy, Warshawski’s dogs, discover a badly bruised and burned teenager wedged between two boulders along Lake Michigan. Warshawski calls emergency services, and the young woman is transported to the hospital. Before anyone can learn more about her, however, she vanishes without a trace. The only clue to the young woman’s identity is the word nagyi, which she utters in a semi-conscious state as she is pulled from the rocks. A mysterious phone call from a woman in a nursing home reveals that the teen is being pursued by powerful men who want to kill her. In subplots, an Orthodox synagogue is vandalized, a nursing home abuses its patients, and police brutality is exposed. Susan Ericksen does a wonderful job narrating the novel, particularly in the varied way that she gives voice to the many characters. Her tone becomes menacing as she voices police lieutenant Coney and is aptly distorted when one of the characters who has been severely beaten speaks.