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 her most
powerful Warshawski novel yet. Total Recall follows the Chicago P.I.
on a road that winds back more than fifty years--and into an intricate
maze of wartime lies, heartbreaking secrets, and harrowing retribution.
For V.I., the journey begins with a national conference in downtown
Chicago, where angry protesters are calling for the recovery of
Holocaust assets. Replayed on the evening news is the scene of a slight
man who has stood up at the conference to tell an astonishing story of a
childhood shattered by the Holocaust--a story that has devastating
consequences for V.I.'s cherished friend and mentor, Lotty Herschel.
Lotty was a girl of nine when she emigrated from Austria to England, one
of a group of children wrenched from their parents and saved from the
Nazi terror just before the war broke out. Now
stunningly--impossibly--it appears that someone from that long-lost past
may have returned.
With the help of a recovered-memory therapist, Paul Radbuka has recently
learned his true identity. But is he who he claims to be? Or is he a
cunning impostor who has usurped someone else's history...a history
Lotty has tried to forget for over fifty years?
As a frightened V.I. watches her friend unravel, she sets out to help in
the only way she can: by investigating Radbuka's past. Already working
on a difficult case for a poor family cheated of their life insurance,
she tries to balance Lotty's needs with her client's, only to find that
both are spiraling into a whirlpool of international crime that
stretches from Switzerland and Germany to Chicago's South Side.
As the atrocities of the past reach out to engulf the living, V.I.
struggles to decide whose memories of a terrible war she can trust, and
moves closer to a chilling realization of the truth--a truth that almost
destroys her oldest friend.
With fierce emotional power, Sara Paretsky has woven a gripping and
morally complex novel of crime and punishment, memory and illusion.
Destined to become a suspense classic, Total Recall proves once again
the daring and compelling genius of Sara Paretsky.
