"Savvy investigator Vic leaves her comfort zone in Chicago to investigate the disappearances of a young film student and a faded Hollywood star in Kansas, where a university town, the remnants of the Cold War and long-simmering racial tensions are stirred into violence by mysteries and murders."

Reluctantly agreeing to help when an old boyfriend asks her to exonerate his mother for the murder of his sister, V. I. Warshawski is forced to confront ugly politics and violent elements in her hometown.

"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...

An audience-participation performance by a controversial artist is disrupted by a violent outburst culminating in the artist's murder days later, prompting V. I. Warshawski to prove the innocence of an Iraqi war veteran charged with the crime.

V .I. Warshawski is famous for her cool under fire, her intelligence, her humor, her unflinching courage, and her love of good coffee. But even the strongest people sometimes need a break to recharge, so her friends send her to Kansas for a weekend of college basketball where Angela, one of her protégées, is playing. And that’s where trouble finds V.I. -- Amazon.com.