Cheap Total Recall (Book) (SARA PARETSKY) Price

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Customer Reviews of Total Recall

CHASING RABBITS
Private detective Victoria Washawski has an easy task. Her client has been denied an insurance claim that was supposidly paid out ten years ago. Off she goes to resolve this matter but not before she detours into Chicago politics, the puzzling behavior of her friend Lotty, a so-called holocaust survivor, a few murders here and there and insurance fraud. To make matters worse she makes all the people associated with her quest for justice resentful and angry at her.

Whew, what a full plate of intrigue. Sara Paretsky has given us a great story but we find Victoria going around chasing various rabbits leading to no where. The convoluted twists and subplots get to become so confusing to the point where you're wondering exactly what is this story about. The answers can be just as puzzling...

You are lead from one thing to another not sure of the point of Paretsky's plot. Eventually you may come to some resolution if any at all. In spite of the rabbit chasing the story is pretty interesting.

One thing I found interesting is her portrayal of the Black characters in this book. Ms Paretsky certainly is unable to capture the nuances of African-American dialect which is very apparent in her work. She peppers her characters with the stock Black stereotypes of men and women. They come across as surly, ungrateful, greedy, criminal and overly sensitive to race. Ms Paretsky needs to do more research in portraying Black and other non-white characters in her work. Sticking to stereotypes just doesn't work.

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One marvelous book
I am a very vivid reader with interests form detective story to politics, from history to genetics, from time travel to physics. I read a lot, on average 6-8 books a week. This is the BEST book I have read in a long while. It has so much history, human psychology, analytical and deduction skills and such a humane statement in it that you continue thinking about this book and characters long after you finish reading it. It might be a little slow in the beginning, but than it was much too fast for me at the end. Once you get to the first corpse, you cannot put the book down. Lotty Herschel's character is the best-written personage. It is such a vivid description of all the atrocities and horrors of WWII that made me cry many times during the book, all these people who were on top of the world a lost everything, and the reality of it happening again. It is such a psychological drama, and such a sweet sorrow with such an optimistic ending that you want to read about these characters over and over again. I am sorry to see some people give this book 1 star, they are just cold, hard, unsophisticated, and neglectful if they cannot see beauty of these book. Read it - you will enjoy it.

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A muddled read
I plowed through this latest VI Warshawski book. It was hard concentrating on the story itself when I kept trying to figure out how Paretsky tied all the threads together in the first place. Lotty is brusque as usual, but this time she is also just plain miserable. Carl is miserable, Don is miserable, Calia is miserable - in fact everyone in this latest disaster is miserable. The only goodness comes from VI and Morrell, but it's not a "good" goodness. VI has changed. No more fighting, fuming, or chasing. The down-on-her-luck, tough as hell VI seems to have disappeared and has been replaced with this gentle soul who has found true love. BLAH! Couple this with the fact that we're treated to Paretsky's (and I guess VI's) political views on the Holocaust, slave reparations, and even the Taliban. I liked VI so much more before I found out she was a liberal!