Monday, January 16, 2017

CRITICAL MASS





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Critical Mass, Sara Paretsky, G P Putnam's Sons, 2013, 462 pp


Summary from Goodreads: 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.  


My Review:
This crime thriller was on my stack of reading for the last week in 2016, consisting of books I had meant to read during the year but hadn't gotten to. It is Ms Paretsky's 18th novel and I have now read them all. One more to go and I will be caught up before her next one comes out later in 2017. She is one of my top favorite mystery/crime novelists. Every book so far has been amazing for its genre.

V I Warshawski, fearless and crusading private investigator, once again finds "the crimes behind the crimes" as Marilyn Stasio of the New York Times puts it. In her hometown of Chicago she ferrets out corruption and destructive inequalities, taking down criminality and standing up for the forgotten people. If we had a few like her in every major American city, our country would be more like what our Founding Fathers hoped they were founding.

Critical Mass uncovers secrets and lies going back to the WWII arms race with its competition between Germany and the United States to develop the first atomic bomb.

Reading coincidence: Michael Chabon's Moonglow, read earlier in December, covers similar territory. In both books the traumas of Nazi concentration camps and the use of Jewish scientists to further that research are key plot elements.

The fast pace, multiple characters, extreme danger to V I's life, and her biting yet comedic take on all events are as present here as in all her books. I always make a list of characters as they appear, tedious near the beginning but eliminating the need to turn back the pages and remember who's who so I can enjoy the ever accelerating pace that invariably makes up the last 100 pages.

In Critical Mass (a physics term meaning the minimum amount of material, such as plutonium, necessary to maintain a nuclear chain reaction), Paretsky honors Jewish Austrian physicist Marietta Blau. She was a researcher whose scientific work deserved a Nobel Prize she never got because she was Jewish. Paretsky's fictional character Martina Saginor is based on Ms Blau.

Even more impressive, the story makes clear the destruction of so many lives due to secrets that were kept both by members of the researcher's family and by some sorry practices of government and corporations, hidden behind actions justified by national security.

No matter what your politics or your patriotic views, Critical Mass will challenge you to pay more attention and look more deeply into our current times. Also it is more fun than watching Twitter fights!


(Critical Mass is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

8 comments:

  1. Twitter fights?! You nailed it, Judy!:-D

    Funny that you read this book with this topic because I bought a nonfiction book based on Hitler's quest to build an atomic bomb and what the Allies did to stop him. I'll be reading it sometime this year. I would like to read this one too.

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    1. It is quite a huge topic. And I had a feeling you would be interested!

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  2. Sara Paretsky is one of my writer-heroes and I always gobble up her books about as soon as they are published. I read this one back in 2014 (Here's my review: http://birdwoman-thenatureofthings.blogspot.com/2014/03/critical-mass-by-sara-paretsky-review.html) and actually found it somewhat disappointing. Perhaps that had as much to do with the mood I was in at the time as with the book itself. Still, I look forward to the next entry in the V.I. saga.

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    1. Read your review. Left a comment. I can see what you mean. I think I was amazed at the parallels with Moonglow and fascinated by the long threads of history that impact our nation still today. Brush Back is next for me and you get a new one to read in 2017!

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  3. Funny coincidence. Not long ago I saw an excellent reportage/film about this topics - exactly what this book describes. Having said that, this sounds really a thrilling read :)

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    1. Sara Paretsky's books are always thrilling to me. Usually they are set completely in the US but when she brings in history from other places they are sometimes even better.

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  4. The atomic bomb angle of the novel sounds interesting to me. She must do quite a bit of research for her books eh? you have me curious about her next one.

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    1. I believe she does. And she is always up to the minute on what is going on in Chicago and in the US.

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