Critical mass: My first VI Warshawski read

This post is a review of the 16th book in the VI Warshawski series by American author, Sara Paretsky. VI - Victoria Iphigenia - is a private detective in Chicago whom Paretsky has been writing about since the early 1980s. I'd heard about the series but had never taken the plunge. I'm not sure about the wisdom of starting with book 16 but I saw it on the shelves of my local library, so I thought I'd give it a go.

Critical mass | Book 16 | Published October 2013 | Read December 2024

I found Critical mass to be a complex crime novel with a fascinating historical element. The story involves VI's close friend, Viennese-born doctor, Lottie Herschel, who escaped from Austria on the Kindertransport to London in 1939 and later lost most of her family in the Holocaust. Lottie's childhood playmate, Kitty Saginor, was on the transport with her. When Kitty's daughter and grandson are in danger all these years later in Chicago, Lottie calls on VI for help.

The story weaves a captivating tale of secrets, lies and silences involving the race to develop an atomic bomb in the 1950s, the use of slave labour to perform the scientific foundational research during WW2, and the rise of a giant technology company in the US on the back of this work.

Without the context of the previous 15 books in the series, I took Critical mass at face value. I rather like VI - she's tough and uncompromising but dogged in her determination to do the right thing. VI is aged 50 in book 16, and I love that a woman around my age is out there doing her thing.

The character of Kitty's mother is loosely based on Jewish Austrian physicist, Marietta Blau, who performed important scientific research that was never recognised. I loved the historical parts of the novel although the treatment of Jewish slave labourers during the war is a distressing read.

The book is complex and there are lots of moving parts, so the reader needs to be on their toes. It's an intelligent book and I can see how the series has prevailed for so long. If Critical mass is anything to go by, I will stay on the lookout for other books in the series.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Since reading Critical mass, I've read book 19 in the series. You can read my review of Shell game here.