Before there was Lisbeth Salander, before there was Stephanie Plum, there was V.I. Warshawski.

For more than three decades, Sara Paretsky has entertained millions of readers with her acclaimed series starring investigator V.I. Warshawski. One of the greatest mystery writers of all time, Paretsky has been honored with virtually every major award in the genre and has earned praise from critics, fans, and fellow authors alike. P.D. James proclaimed, 'No other crime writer has so powerfully and effectively combined a well-crafted detective story with the novel of social realism.'

In Fallout, Paretsky takes her hero—Victoria Iphigenia by birth, V.I. by profession, and Vic to her friends—on her very first case out of Chicago, when the hunt for a vanished film student and a faded Hollywood star leads her to Kansas. Accompanied by her dog, V.I. tracks the pair through a university town, across fields dotted with Cold War—era missile silos . . . and into a past riven by long-simmering racial tensions. She hopes her search will yield the key to the mysteries of the present, but every answer V.I. finds unveils another puzzling question—and leads to more dead bodies. And in her most baffling case to date, not even the seasoned V.I. is safe.

Suspenseful and provocative, witty and intelligent, Fallout finds Sara Paretsky and V.I. Warshawski working at the height of their powers.