V.I. at 25

We’ve often celebrated the birthdays of authors here at The Rap Sheet, but today we commemorate the birthday of a character: Chicago private eye V.I. (Victoria Iphigenia) Warshawski. As her creator, Sara Paretsky, reminds us at The Outfit:

On January 22, 1982, V.I. Warshawski was born: Indemnity Only, the first book in the series, was published by the Dial Press. V.I. started small, but she started a revolution in the way women are perceived in fiction. V.I. broke down walls around detecting women. Neither scheming vamp nor helpless victim, she’s a woman like most of the ones we all know, tackling life’s problems and solving them as best she can.

Nowadays all kinds of women are doing all kinds of things to find their voices, and to be taken seriously as readers and writers, but 25 years ago it was a lonely kind of place to be.

Sue Grafton’s own “gal gumshoe,” Kinsey Millhone, also debuted in 1982, in A Is for Alibi. I read both that and Indemnity Only, and went on to read other Grafton novels, but found eventually that I preferred V.I.’s tougher nature and her passionate resistance to compromising on matters of justice. Paretsky’s Italian-Polish detective has won over myriad others, as well. Despite failing at a transfer to the big screen (Kathleen Turner’s portrayal of her in 1991’s V.I. Warshawski was pretty damn awful), V.I.’s 12th novel-length appearance, in Fire Sale (2005), found her more popular than ever. Her fictional career is justly celebrated in the latest issue of Clues, and Paretsky reports that “on February 27, Sara will speak at the Library of Congress on V.I.’s birth and growth.”

Read Paretsky’s short tribute to her character here.