This author needs a better editor. There were at least two glaring errors. VI took the dogs with her when taking Bernie home but then proceeded through the day without them. Maybe there was too much going on with the story to make it believable. ( )

Private investigator V.I. Warshawski went to South Chicago to support her goddaughter Bernie, the coach of the eleven-year-old girls on the soccer team playing the final game in a tournament. Afterwards, the team was going to be recognized by the South Lakefront Improvement Council (SLICK) who helped sponsor the team.
The girls were waiting in the hall outside the room where SLICK was holding its monthly meeting, The meeting was very intense when Coop, a man in the audience, loudly protested a plan to build a landfill on Lake Michigan to develop the area. Bernie’s boyfriend, Leo, worked with SLICK and was doing his presentation when Coop interrupted. Chicago had plenty of money for lakefront development but very little was used tor minority areas. The meeting went into recess so the soccer players could get their recognition.
Warshawski invited Bernie to join her and Peter, her boyfriend, for something to eat afterwards as they celebrated her birthday. As they headed out, they heard a the sound of a small, toy piano and traced it to a ragged woman under the railroad tracks. The woman blended in with the homeless people in the area but Bernie recognized the music as that of a formerly popular musician, Lydia Zamir. She and Hector, her guitar-playing partner had been shot and killed in a mass shooting at a rally in Kansas four years earlier. As they approached her, the woman backed off, afraid of them. Coop appeared and told them she didn’t trust anyone, people should just leave her alone.
Warshawski didn’t quite buy that. The woman appeared to be in very bad shape, physically and mentally, so she tried, unsuccessfully a few more times to gain her trust, bringing her food and supplies and giving her her name and phone number.
The story of the woman got out and when she tried to run away, she was injured near the train tracks. The woman was taken to a hospital but slipped out before she was treated. The police cleared out the entire area where the homeless people had been living and Warshawski tried to find out where she had gone.
Soon afterwards, Leo’s body was found near the area where the woman had been playing. Further killings and vandalizing occurred.
Warshawski’s hunt to find the woman, now pretty much identified as Lydia (she had not died at the rally) continued as she tried to find her location and get her the help she desperately needed but rejected;. Her investigation led her to learn more about the company wanting to develop the area, the corrupt government in Chicago, and the story about Hector and his family’s background, all of which made Warshawski a prime target.
DEAD L:AND has a somewhat complicated but plausible plot. The characters are realistic, the bad guys definitely focused on their mission regardless of the cost. But Warshawski does manage to learn the real story.
I received a copy of this book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers. ( )

"Maybe you are only a drop in the bucket or a teaspoon in a desert but there are some fragile plants that will die if your teaspoon goes away."

This felt like two separate books. Not sure the connection to the two cases was strong enough. Why do detectives begin to seem preachy ( )

Because I hadn’t read one of Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski novels since 2009’s Hardball, I wondered how much I would remember about Vic and all her supporting characters. A decade away from exposure to Warshawski’s Chicago is, after all, plenty long enough time to forget most of the details of that world, even as vividly as Paretsky always presents them. As it turns out, I needn’t have worried because before I knew it, Dead Land fit like an old glove and I was totally immersed in Paretsky’s story. Dead Land even marks kind of a milestone in the Warshawski saga because it is the twentieth novel of the series.

This time around, Warshawski finds herself doing battle with some powerful, and very rich, people who understand exactly how to manipulate Chicago’s corrupt political system in their favor. For these people, it’s all about making millions of dollars by exploiting public property on Chicago’s Southside lakefront - and if they bribe a few of Chicago’s finest politicians along the way, they can make it happen. That’s bad enough, but it all gets personal when Vic’s Canadian goddaughter stumbles into a situation that might expose their scam before it happens. Those same rich and powerful folk can’t let that happen, so people begin to die, and it is only a matter of time before they come for Vic and her goddaughter.

That’s the main plot, but I enjoyed the side plot even more. It seems that Bernie Fouchard, the goddaughter in question, has found a famous protest singer living in squaller on Chicago’s streets. The woman is mentally unstable and in danger of dying from exposure. Lydia Zamir, the singer, watched her husband shot to death on stage and never recovered from the shock. She eventually disappeared and no one realized where she was until Bernie and her friends spotted her in her street-nest playing a tiny toy piano and singing songs to herself. Now, Bernie wants to protect the woman - but she and her boyfriend are bringing way too much attention to this part of Chicago to suit the criminals who want to exploit the area.

Bottom Line: Sara Paretsky writes a complicated novel and, at times, I did struggle to keep up with all the threads and names she was exploring. But the struggle is worth the effort because Dead Land ends in a very satisfying manner with all the loose ends tied together - and Paretsky does that without having to use the book’s last pages to have one character annoyingly explain to another character everything that’s just happened as so many mystery/crime writers seem to do today. If you are wondering, Dead Land will also, I think, work as a fine standalone novel for those unfamiliar with the Warshawski timeline and character. Now I wonder why I stayed away for so long. ( )