Sara Paretsky is best known for a series of crime novels featuring the first great woman private eye, V.I. Warshawski. Paretsky is also the founder of Sisters in Crime, an organization that supports women crime writers, as well as a foundation to encourage women in the sciences. Critical Mass, her latest V.I. Warshawski, draws on both of those interests: it is set in modern Chicago and among women scientists doing radiation research in pre-war Vienna.
PERSON: Geraldine Wright, her mother-in-law, a Victorian
PLACE: Deadstick Pond, one of Chicago’s few remaining wetlands
THING: fringe from her father’s bar mitzvah tallit
RANDY’S THING: the ataulfo mango, now weirdly renamed, but not in his house