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Author: Sara Paretsky
ISBN : B00C5R7GKI
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Format: PDF, EPUB
Download electronic versions of selected books Epub Critical Mass (V.I. Warshawski Novel) [Kindle Edition] from mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link
"Vic is at her stubborn, reckless, compassionate best in this complicated page-turner about selfish secrets passed down through generations. Paretsky has been on a roll lately, her long-running, trailblazing series at its most dynamic since the early days." —Booklist on Critical Mass New York Times
-bestselling author Sara Paretsky’s brilliant protagonist V.I. Warshawski returns in another hard-hitting entry, combining razor-sharp plotting and compelling characters with a heady mix of timely political and social themes. V.I. Warshawski’s closest friend in Chicago is the Viennese-born doctor Lotty Herschel, who lost most of her family in the Holocaust. Lotty escaped to London in 1939 on the Kindertransport with a childhood playmate, Kitty Saginor Binder. When Kitty’s daughter finds her life is in danger, she calls Lotty, who, in turn, summons V.I. to help. The daughter’s troubles turn out to be just the tip of an iceberg of lies, secrets, and silence, whose origins go back to the mad competition among America, Germany, Japan and England to develop the first atomic bomb. The secrets are old, but the people who continue to guard them today will not let go of them without a fight.
Download latest books on mediafire and other links compilation Epub Critical Mass
- File Size: 1607 KB
- Print Length: 481 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0399160566
- Publisher: Putnam Adult; 1st edition (October 22, 2013)
- Sold by: Penguin Group (USA) LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00C5R7GKI
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
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- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,956 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #25
in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery > Hard-Boiled - #27
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery > Private Investigators - #32
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery > Hard-Boiled
- #25
in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery > Hard-Boiled - #27
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery > Private Investigators - #32
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery > Hard-Boiled
Epub Critical Mass
I am comparing Sara Paretsky's new book, "Critical Mass" to her previous novels, not to novels in general.
Sara Paretsky has written 19 books. Most of them - 17 - were VI Warshawski novels and the other two are "stand-alones". Having read them all, I think her newest, "Critical Mass" is the deepest and best written so far. I suppose the title could refer to both the "critical mass" needed to produce an atomic bomb and the "critical mass" of people and plot needed to produce a good book. The atomic bomb stuff I can't explain - way above my pay grade! - but the second, the contents of this novel, I can try to explain.
"Critical Mass" is set in both Vienna and Chicago, the past and the present. The past is the 1900's to the 1940's and focuses on VI's old friend, Lotte Herschel's, family and friends as they find that being Jewish in Vienna, particularly after the Anschluss in 1938, as an increasingly dangerous business. Lotte and her brother are rescued at the last minute and sent to London - and safety - on the Kindertransport. Her family was left behind and all perished in the Holocaust.
Also sent with Lotte and her brother was Kathe Saginor, the daughter of a single mother, Martina Saginor, who was raised with Lotte in Vienna. Kathe, later Kitty, was regarded as a "poor relations" both in Vienna, and later in Chicago, where both women settled after the war. Martina Saginor was a genius who worked in the scientific academies looking into atom. She was later arrested by the Nazis and served as a slave laborer and vanished in the war.
But the Saginor family is not the only family in Paretsky's book. Martina's lover and father of her daughter, a Nobel prize winner, Benjamin Dzornen, has fled to Chicago with his family before the outbreak of war.
5 stars for plot, 3 for characters
Critical Mass does what all good mystery/thrillers should do: it provides riveting action to distract the reader from ungraded midterms and unplanted bulbs, and it opens a window on new information - in this case the back-story of women who worked in early atomic weapons research and computer math/physics. Chicago, of course, is a logical setting for such subjects, and while we don't get scenes under Stagg Field's bleachers back in the day, we do get V.I.'s vivid encounters with various of the university's libraries and librarians as she follows the history of scientists both real and fictive.
The link between present-day Chicago and WW II European women is, of course, Dr Lotte Herschel, although her actual presence in the book is relatively slight. But character development has never been a hallmark of this series.
It's at this point in a Paretsky review where I generally complain that Vic is tiresomely trapped in 80's feminist knee-jerks, and I'm happy to report that very little of that pattern appears here. But there's nothing much to replace it, either. It seems absurd to complain about missing a first-person narrator, but in this installment of her career, VI Warshawski is curiously absent. We get none of the housekeeping angst, little of the dogs, only occasional descriptions of food (no cooking) and no real description of clothing, plus a love-interest where she's literally phoning it in.
These were all elements of the series that originally marked it as a personal narrative of a personable woman, elements now absent or so thin as to be transparent.
Along with Kinsey Milhone and Sharon McCone, VI was the break-through detective of the women's movement.
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