Sara Paretsky Is the (Crime) Boss

In 2023, Sara Paretsky took a trip to Paris to see a friend and returned home to Chicago with an idea for a crime novel. While in Paris, Paretsky stayed in a charming, out-of-the-way hotel that had a quirky, elevated bed that was hard to get in and out of. One morning, while trying to get off the bed, she fell and landed on the floor. As she sat there, feeling dazed and rubbing her hip, she began to picture an older female detective whose body is beginning to fail her.

That image inspired Paretsky’s new novel, Bad Companyher first standalone thriller in nearly 20 years. The novel, out in November from Minotaur, stars Lily Sedako, a fiery, 70-something former CIA agent with a bad shoulder, who comes out of retirement to go on an international mission. “I wanted to write about someone my age who was more of a risk-taker, and willing to travel everywhere,” Paretsky says over Zoom. “This character is kind of my fantasy, my doppelgänger, so to speak, of being an older person.”

For more than four decades, Paretsky has been creating dynamic female leads who are unafraid of conflict. The trailblazing author began her career in 1982 with Indemnity Onlythe first novel in her bestselling V.I. Warshawski series, which stars a tough female Chicago PI. Indemnity Only upended the hard-boiled crime fiction genre, which had been dominated by men, and created opportunities for other women in the field.

In addition to the series, which spans 22 installments, Paretsky is the author of two previous standalone novels, Ghost Country (1998) and Bleeding Kansas (2008), and the memoir Writing in an Age of Silence (2007). She has received the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers’ Association, and is the founder of Sisters in Crime, an organization for women crime fiction writers. Her books have sold more than five million copies, according to Minotaur, and have been translated into 28 languages.

When Paretsky first conceived of Bad Companyshe says she wanted it to have the vibe of a Carl Hiaasen book. “I thought, This could be fun—this could be a caper novel,” she recalls. “Then I sat down to write it. Nothing I write, first of all, is ever easy, although you always think it will be from a distance. Also, I don’t do capers.”

Bad Company is set in Hayalistan, a fictional former Soviet republic, known for its mineral-rich land, where Lily worked 20 years ago as a field operative, and where she returns to investigate a shadowy entity that’s dredging up sensitive information about her past. Paretsky wanted Hayalistan to feel like a real place, and she rewrote the book eight times to get the details right. “I’m always second-guessing myself,” she admits. “I’m always thinking, Oh, this isn’t good enough, this isn’t working, and throwing it out and trying again.”

Keith Kahla, Paretsky’s editor, says he had a great time working on Bad Companytheir first novel together. “It’s kind of like if someone calls you and says, Oh yeah, so Stephen King has a new book, are you interested?” Kahla says. “Sara is an icon. And that’s not something that was gifted to her. It’s the result of decades of steady, hard work.”

Paretsky was born in 1947 in Ames, Iowa, and raised in Kansas, the only daughter in a family of five kids. In Writing in an Age of Silenceshe reveals that her professor father and homemaker mother were “desperately needy” and that her father told her she had a “second-rate mind,” which gave her a complex that stayed with her into adulthood. After college, Paretsky moved to Chicago, her adopted home. In the ’70s, she earned a PhD in history from the University of Chicago and an MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. In 1976, she married Courtenay Wright, a renowned physics professor, who died in 2018. “Courtenay was a huge help in my life,” she says. “He had so much belief in me and gave me confidence.”

When Paretsky was in her 20s, she read Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep for the first time. She objected to Chandler’s portrayal of women as victims and vixens and became interested in writing a detective story that showcased a real woman. While working in the marketing department of CNA Insurance in Chicago, she wrote Indemnity Onlywhich was rejected numerous times and took nearly two years to get published. The novel was partly inspired by Paretsky’s misogynistic boss. (“What a particular kind of lying weasel he was,” she recalls.) She was listening to him drone on one day at work when V.I. popped into her head.

“I didn’t want Philip Marlowe in drag,” she says, referring to the detective of The Big Sleep. “I wanted a woman who was like me and my friends.”

Dominick Abel, Paretsky’s agent, has been with her since Indemnity Only and says her impact on the crime genre can’t be overstated. Before she came along, most female detectives were amateur sleuths. “Sara broke new ground in 1982,” Abel says. “She struck a chord with a new
generation of female and male readers. She was one of the first to write a female private eye in a modern way.”

V.I. always speaks her mind, and so does Lily, which is what Paretsky loves about her. “Lily doesn’t apologize,” Paretsky says. “Accept her or hate her, but she’s not going to change for you.”

When Bad Company opens, Lily, a linguistics expert, is in Chicago. She’s a restless retiree who was pushed out of the CIA by her male superiors, who labeled her difficult to work with. Lily reenters the fray after she receives an anonymous package that contains a magazine article about Hayalistan. The article includes a grainy photo of Lily interacting with local tribal women, and suggests that she may have had something to do with a coup in the country, decades ago. Lily travels to Hayalistan under an assumed name—in defiance of the CIA—where she hopes to reconnect with the women who once trusted her, and find out who’s trying to frame her. While there, she investigates Russian and American dealings in the region, and begins to understand who’s in charge, and what they want with her.

Paretsky lives on Chicago’s South Side, near Lake Michigan and the Barack Obama Presidential Center. In her off time she works as a volunteer and mentor and is the founder and sole funder of the Sara & Two C-Dogs Foundation, which supports women and girls. She misses her late husband but finds solace in her friendships.

“I’m prone to depression, but I can also bring a lot of energy to my friends,” she says. “So I can bring you down or pep you up, depending on where I am.”

Like her characters, Paretsky is determined to make a difference and be heard. “It’s all about voice,” she says. “Voice and voicelessness. Women’s voices and women bonding and connecting and making a path for each other in the world.”

Elaine Szewczyk’s writing has appeared in McSweeney’s and other publications. She’s the author of the novel I’m with Stupid.