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Fiction. Mystery. Suspense. Thriller. HTML:The bestselling V.I. Warshawski novels have dazzled readers and earned the acclaim of critics everywhere. �V.I. Warshawski rules,� writes Newsweek, crowning her �the most engaging woman in detective fiction.� Of V.I.�s creator, the Chicago Tribune says �Sara Paretsky has no peer.� Now Paretsky brings her incomparable storytelling brilliance to her most powerful Warshawski novel yet. Total Recall follows the Chicago P.I. on a road that winds back more than fifty years � and into an intricate maze of wartime lies, heartbreaking secrets, and harrowing retribution. For V.I., the journey begins with a national conference in downtown Chicago, where angry protesters are calling for the recovery of Holocaust assets. Replayed on the evening news is the scene of a slight man who has stood up at the conference to tell an astonishing story of a childhood shattered by the Holocaust � a story that has devastating consequences for V.I.�s cherished friend and mentor, Lotty Herschel. Lotty was a girl of nine when she emigrated from Austria to England, one of a group of children wrenched from their parents and saved from the Nazi terror just before the war broke out. Now stunningly � impossibly � it appears that someone from that long-lost past may have returned. With the help of a recovered-memory therapist, Paul Radbuka has recently learned his true identity. But is he who he claims to be? Or is he a cunning impostor who has usurped someone else�s history ... a history Lotty has tried to forget for over fifty years? As a frightened V.I. watches her friend unravel, she sets out to help in the only way she can: by investigating Radbuka�s past. Already working on a difficult case for a poor family cheated of their life insurance, she tries to balance Lotty�s needs with her client�s, only to find that both are spiraling into a whirlpool of international crime that stretches from Switzerland and Germany to Chicago�s South Side. As the atrocities of the past reach out to engulf the living, V.I. struggles to decide whose memories of a terrible war she can trust, and moves closer to a chilling realization of the truth � a truth that almost destroys her oldest friend. With fierce emotional power, Sara Paretsky has woven a gripping and morally complex novel of crime and punishment, memory and illusion. Destined to become a suspense classic, Total Recall proves once again the daring and compelling genius of Sara Paretsky.… (more)
User reviews
Paretsky always sets her plots around at least one and usually more social issues, weaving them together in an intricate way so that the issues all bear on one another and the plot as well. Total Recall is one of her best in this
Max Loewenthal, the director of Beth Israel Hospital where V>I>’s other close friend, Lotty Herschel works as a surgeon, has a greed to participate in a seminar about recovery of Jewish assets lost during the Shoah. This is in answer to the political efforts of an Orthodox rabbi who is leading a political movement to force insurance companies to pay on policies made out to Jews who died during the Holocaust; the movement is particularly hard on Jewish institutions that it perceives as not being firm enough on this issue. A bill is pending before the Illinois legislature. But life is complicated by an African-American alderman who is also demanding reparations from companies who benefitted from slavery before the Civil War.
Add to that paul Radubka a man who claims that he was in Terezin, a Nazi concentration camp that held, among others, Jewish children. paul claims that he had lost his memory due to an abusive foster father, that he has reclaimed those memories thanks to a therapist that uses hypnosis to help people recover such memories--and he has decided that Max and Lotty are his relatives. He gains media attention, and suddenly all of Chicago is focused on this fragile little man who then accuses V.I. as well as Lotty and Max of preventing him from reuniting with his family.
Yes, eventually there is a murder. But while that’s sort of standard police procedural stuff, all the issues surrounding the murder are not, and Paretsky handles them superbly in what could very well be her best book in the series to date.
It’s utterly absorbing in what we learn about the transport of Jewish children to England just before the war shut everything down, the survivors, the raging debate over the recall of memories through hypnosis, and the arguments on both sides of the issues, both for recovery of Jewish assets and for slave reparations.
A fine though not particularly unusual plot greatly enriched by Paretsky’s handling of sensitive social issues. As usual, her stock characters is the series--V.I., Lotty, Max, Mr. Contreras, and a first-timer who will reappear in other books--are very well drawn, making up for the relative thinness of the “bad guys”.
An outstanding read, not only for V.I. fans but also for those who enjoy having their police procedurals fleshed out with contemporary issues.
This one turned that aspect of the stories around; I found myself engaged with the writing. There wasn't the sense that Paretsky was dragging the story. On the other hand, there's the story, itself—the mystery aspect of this plot is so completely ho-hum and uninteresting for 99% of the book that there's still no real win here.
What was interesting was the Holocaust side story of Victoria's older friends. Unfortunately, that was only a small percentage of the 400+ pages. It's a shame because the small link between the Holocaust angle and the insurance scam angle could actually have been a real winner if it had occupied more of the book. Instead of making it a small device to answer the question, "Why are we even telling Lotty's story?", it would have made for a more thrilling book if it had come center stage 200 pages earlier.
I'm still uncertain about whether to continue this series.
The detective work (such as it was) was sloppy, there were no characters that were sympathetic (a mass murder of everyone involved would have been more satisfying),
This is the 2nd Warshawski book I've abandoned this week. I'm done.
The chapters with Lotty's personal interjections are a little jarring at first, although her story is one of the mystery threads the reader is following, so it is helpful to see things from her perspective. Lotty's chapters are also quite moving.
Not all the characters in this book are likable: Paul Radbuka's behavior is irrational and a little hard to stomach, and Lotty's treatment of her friends is questionable. The ending is also a little flat with unresolved issues for some of the characters. Totall Recall is a long book, with a lot of information for the reader to digest, however, the story is engrossing. The suspense starts with the discovery of the first murder and continues to build. Paretsky creates good tension between her characters, all of whom are flawed, and the secrets between them keep the reader turning the pages. Total Recall is a decent read.
In this book, we get to learn some of the history of V. I.'s friend, Lotty Herschel.
V. I.'s former boyfriend's sister recommends V. I. when a family's life insurance claim is denied because the insurance company
I guessed parts of the plot long before V. I. figured them out.