When pretty, smart Sara Long is found bludgeoned to death, it's easy to blame the man with the bat. But Georgia Davis-former cop and newly-minted PI-is hired to look into the incident at the behest of the accused's sister, and what she finds hints at a much different, much darker answer. It seems the privileged, preppy schoolgirls on Chicago's North Shore have learned just how much their innocence is worth to hot-under-the-collar businessmen. But while these girls can pay for Prada pricetags, they don't realize that their ...
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When pretty, smart Sara Long is found bludgeoned to death, it's easy to blame the man with the bat. But Georgia Davis-former cop and newly-minted PI-is hired to look into the incident at the behest of the accused's sister, and what she finds hints at a much different, much darker answer. It seems the privileged, preppy schoolgirls on Chicago's North Shore have learned just how much their innocence is worth to hot-under-the-collar businessmen. But while these girls can pay for Prada pricetags, they don't realize that their new business venture may end up costing them more than they can afford.
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There's a new no-nonsense female private detective in Chicago: Georgia Davis, a former cop who is tough and smart enough to give even the legendary V.I. Warshawski a run for her money. (Sara Paretsky provides Hellmann with a gracious nod in the jacket copy.) Hellmann, who put together CHICAGO BLUES, that wonderfully evocative anthology of music-related mystery stories, also writes a series about video producer and single mother Ellie Forman (who we learn was involved in the case which led to Georgia's suspension). Davis is something else again: deeply moral in the best way, grittier, more noir, a throwback to the best of Dashiell Hammett, with a touch of modern writers like Barbara D'Amato and Michael Allen Dymmoch to keep things up to date. A beautiful, smart junior at Newfield School in Winnetka ("considered one of the most prestigious public schools in the country, but a place that mirrored both the best and the worst of teenage life") is murdered in a park near the North Shore. She was involved in a particularly nasty hazing incident by a group of senior girls, who covered her head with a bucket filled with fish guts and then left her. A sad and solitary masturbator witnesses the incident, hears her cries for help, but before he can get to her someone else beats her to death with a baseball bat. The cops find the mentally troubled man nearby with the bat in his hand and the girl's blood on his shirt. A registered sex offender because of his solitary habits, he seems to be a perfect fit. But some people -- the man's caregiving sister, and soon Davis herself, hired by the sister -- begin to doubt his guilt. Nagging questions arise: why was the hazing incident not mentioned by the CPD until they were forced to acknowledge it? What pressure was brought from above to steamroll the case to trial? Could it have something to do with the fact that one of the senior girls involved is the daughter of the ambitious new State's Attorney? In the end, after more blood has been spilled and a chain of lies has been broken, a friend of Georgia says, "This life of yours. How can you do it day after day? Doesn't it get to you? Don't you ever want to be normal?" To which she replies, "Who says I'm not 'normal,' whatever that is? This is my job. It's what I do." She does it very well indeed. So does Hellmann.
