Publishers Weekly says of Sara Paretsky's fictional detective V I Warshawski, "Among today's P.I.'s, nobody comes close to Warshawski;" Entertainment Weekly adds that "she clearly leads the field" of private investigators. With almost 6 million of her New York Times best-selling novels in print, the reading public clearly agrees.

Like Kafka before her, novelist Sara Paretsky gained her insight into human foibles from working in an insurance company -- Paretsky spent ten years as a marketing manager at CNA Insurance in Chicago. That experience shows up in her expert dissection of the low side of high finance in her New York Times best-selling V I Warshawski novels.

In the late sixties, Paretsky moved from her native Kansas to Chicago to do community work in the neighborhood where Martin Luther King was organizing for social change. Like fellow Chicagoan Nelson Algren she is a meticulous chronicler of the lives of people on society's margins. Her mainstream novel, Ghost Country, stays with those themes -- but takes a detour away from V I. Hailed as "rich, astonishing and affecting", Ghost Country blends comedy, magic, and a gritty urban realism in a breathtaking ride along Chicago's mean streets.

The recipient of numerous awards, including the 1996 Mark Twain Award for "distinguished contributions to Midwestern literature," and a Visiting Scholarship at Oxford University in 1997, Ms. Paretsky has also worked hard to support other writers. In 1986 she helped found Sisters in Crime to aid other women in finding their writing voices; she also served as the group's first president. The organization now has over three thousand members around the world.

A graduate of the University of Kansas, Paretsky holds a PhD in history and an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago but continues to support Kansas women's basketball. She has also founded two scholarships at Kansas, and mentors students in Chicago's inner city schools. She lives in Chicago with her husband and their Golden Retriever, and is an hour away from their only grandchild.

Courtesy of the www.saraparetsky.com