The fourteenth V.I. Warshawski novel from a crime author who writes with unbeatable pace and a passion for justice.

Club Gouge: Chicago's edgiest night spot, where a woman calling herself the Body Artist invites the audience to use her naked body as a canvas.

The show attracts all kinds of people, from a menacing cop to Ukrainian mobsters and Iraq war veterans. A tormented young painter comes too, and the designs she creates on the Body Artist drive one of the soldiers into a violent rage.

When the painter is shot, the police assume the shell-shocked veteran went off the rails. But his family hires V.I. to clear his name - and the detective discovers a chain of ugly truths stretching from Iraq to Chicago's South Side.

"One of the most memorable novels in Paretsky's fine series." - Joan Smith, The Times

"Paretsky has been putting her private investigator through her paces since 1982, changing perceptions of women in crime fiction through the creation of a fiercely independent female detective. She keeps her brand of politicised noir fresh by responding to issues - social, cultural and political as well as gender - in contemporary life . . . Tackling the politics of the Iraq War and ideologies of corporate greed where the human body is devalued, Paretsky is firing on all cylinders" - Metro

"This is the 14th case for the feminist gumshoe and it has all the hallmarks and energy of its predecessors." - Sunday Telegraph

"With the creation of V.I. Warshawski, Sara Paretsky did more than anyone to change the face of contemporary women's fiction." - Express on Sunday

"Very readable" - The Times

"Paretsky's writing captures the essence of her beguiling heroine: Victoria Iphigenia is as tough as nails with a soft spot for justice that just won't quit." - Time Out