Lotty Herschel, V.I. Warshawski's stand-in maternal figure, needs her friend's help in MWA Grand Master Paretsky's riveting 20th novel featuring the intrepid Chicago PI (after 2017's Fall Out). The police are trying to pin a murder on Lotty's Canadian-born engineering student nephew, Felix, who's involved with Engineers in a Free State, whose members include several Middle Eastern students. In the midst of trying to gently extract information out of the recalcitrant Felix, Warshawski's own past turns up on her door in the form of Harmony Seale, the niece of her sleazy lawyer ex-husband. Harmony wants Warshawski's help in finding her older sister, Reno, who moved to Chicago for work but has fallen off the grid. Warshawki reluctantly tries to track down the wayward Reno and finds herself in the middle of a corporate power struggle, where rich men take what they want and young women caught in the middle bear the brunt of power grabs and worse. Paretsky isn't one to tiptoe around injustice, and this entry proves once again that she's one of the sharpest crime writers on the scene today. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Agency. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Fan favorite V.I. "Vic" Warshawski is back in her 20th adventure (after 2017's Fallout), toggling between intense cases involving her dear friend Lotty's grandnephew and her own niece by marriage. Felix Herschel is a prime suspect for the death of an unidentified man found in the woods. V.I., discovering Felix reticent, investigates Felix herself as ICE starts to play a larger role in the case. Meanwhile, one of V.I.'s two nieces has vanished, and the other is frantic to find her. To Vic's simultaneous delight and angst, her ex-husband seems at least tangentially involved in Reno's disappearance, since he'd pointed her in the direction of a job with a predatory loan company. As Vic digs deeper, danger edges closer to her and her niece Harmony. Clearing Felix, finding her niece Reno, and keeping everyone safe in the process might just be asking too much. As ever, Paretsky manages to keep V.I. topical and culturally relevant, delving into fears of immigrant communities and the heavy hand ICE plays, while examining abuses levied by wealthy corporations against the poor. VERDICT Highly recommended for fans of Warshawski and for book clubs seeking fast-paced reads with excellent current-events hooks. There's plenty here to consider. [See Prepub Alert, 4/19/18.]-Julie Kane, Washington & Lee Lib., Lexington, VA © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Is there anything creepier than being stalked on social media? In THE STRANGER GAME (Hanover Square, $25.99), Peter Gadol makes a convincing case that the real-world experience is much creepier and far more dangerous. The narrator of this story, a 40year-old architect named Rebecca, doesn't think of herself as a stalker. She's just so "full of longing" for human contact after her ex-boyfriend, Ezra, disappears that she commits herself to a game she discovered in an online travel journal. There are only three rules: "Choose your subjects at random." "No contact." "Never follow the same stranger twice." Gadol plays his own games here, shifting the novel's focus from Rebecca to Ezra, who is pursuing his own version of the stranger game, and then back to Rebecca, who's beginning to balk at its restrictions. "One was supposed to connect but not get involved," she reminds herself. "But why not get involved? If the link to a stranger was entirely internal, only one way, how could it be meaningful?" It's dizzying, after a while, trying to live inside these people's heads, fabricating their intimate thoughts, listening to them breathe.

*Starred Review* When the nephew of V. I. (Vic) Warshawski's friend Lotty Herschel is summoned to a crime scene to identify a body, Vic can't let Felix go alone. Felix's insistence that he has no idea why his contact information was found in the dead man's pocket does little to dampen the cops' suspicions, and he's not talking to Vic, either. Vic knows she'll have to find the connection herself to keep Felix out of jail, but her only lead is the flimsy link between the victim's archaeology work in Syria and Felix's Syrian friends in his Engineering in a Free State group. Then Vic's niece Harmony calls, desperate to find her sister, Reno, who disappeared shortly after reporting that she was sexually harassed and possibly assaulted at a corporate retreat. Vic is doing double duty until she discovers that the law firm of her ex-husband, Dick, has troubling connections to both cases, and his threat-filled stonewalling indicates something beyond post-divorce antagonism. An expertly woven tale of greed and impunity emerges as the two mysteries plunge V. I. into the surprisingly dangerous world of antiquities at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, as well as necessitating a tightrope walk through Chicago's ICE-targeted immigrant communities and a revelatory investigation into the predatory practice of payday lending. True to form, V. I.'s latest tangle with white-collar crime's violent underbelly will leave readers pondering the intersections of power, authority, and humanity. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Even after decades, Paretsky's landmark series remains as popular as ever, and the social consciousness behind the stories seems ever more in tune with contemporary events.--Christine Tran Copyright 2018 Booklist

V.I. Warshawski (Fallout, 2017, etc.) goes to bat for a niece of her own and a grandnephew of her best friend.When an unidentified corpse turns up in the wilds of Cap Sauer's Holding, Lt. McGivney of the Cook County Sheriff's Office has to grasp at straws, and his most promising straw is a piece of paper in the dead man's pocket with Felix Herschel's phone number. Felix, whose grandfather was the brother of obstetrician Lotty Herschel, says he doesn't know what the man eventually identified as Elorenze Fausson was doing with his number. In the absence of any other suspects, however, McGivney remains interested, and Warshawski resolves to find evidence that exculpates him or incriminates someone else. Meantime, Harmony Seale, whose late mother was the sister of Warshawski's long-ago husband, attorney Richard Yarborough, has come in from Portland looking for her sister, Reno, and she wants Warshawski to help. The trail of Reno, who worked for bottom-feeding payday lender Rest EZ, leads back to a getaway weekend for high-rolling executives at which she was part of the entertainment, and the closer Warshawski looks at the clues, the more it looks as if her ex is in this mess up to his neck. It would be a relief to work on the murder of Elorenze Fausson if Warshawski didn't keep getting attacked by huge, implacable Slavic thugsand if the two cases didn't give uncomfortable signs of growing together in an intricately woven pattern that includes kidnapping, the theft of a priceless antiquity, an elaborate and painstakingly detailed insurance fraud, and some unlikely romance for Warshawski.It's pretty obvious early on who the criminal is, but that's true in most Sherlock Holmes stories, and the knowledge doesn't hurt any more here than there. The considerable pleasure comes from following the legendary heroine through an impenetrable maze of felonies knowing that you're in a master's hands. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.