Sara Paretsky

Sara Paretsky is known for her influential V.I. Warshawski series which transformed the masculine hard-boiled detective formula into a vehicle for feminist values. But Paretsky does more than this. Her novels also illustrate the extent to which detective fiction acts as a literature of trauma allowing Paretsky to address the politics of agency in ways that go beyond the personal for trauma always has a social and a political dimension. Paretsky's work also exploits the way detective fiction mirrors the writing of history. Here Paretsky uses the form to expose the partiality of historical accounts - whether they be personal institutional or national - that authorise 'forgetting' of a particularly insidious kind. Significantly all these issues are explored within the framework of the traditional hard-boiled detective novel. As a result Paretsky's achievement forces us to acknowledge the deeply subversive potential of detective fiction.