Born in Kansas, Sara Paretsky is more associated with Chicago as is her well-known protagonist, V.I. Warshawski, the independent and sarcastic private investigator. It seems incredible that when the first in the twenty-book series was published in 1982, the female P.I. was an anomaly and the usual work costume of jeans and tee-shirt was considered far from the norm.

V.I.’s cases usually start out as white-collar crimes and she gets to display her strong sense of justice in pursuing her quarry, often in a physically demanding way, and also often involving smashing cars. 

            This is the first in the series: