There was a time when the female detectives of mystery novels were prim and proper ladies who either solved crimes from the parlor rooms of their country homes (á la Agatha Christie's Ms. Marple) or else they would have to call on their gentlemen friends for help when their cases turned really dangerous (as did P. D. James's Cordelia Gray). The role of hardboiled private eye was reserved for the Sam Spades and Philip Marlowes of the genre. All that changed in the early 1980s with the debut of the self-reliant female detectives who gave the tried-and-true formulas a kick in the pants by giving mysteries a real feminist edge. And the woman who led this literary revolution is Sara Paretsky, creator of the V. I. Warshawski series.

Warshawski, a former public defender from a working-class, southside Chicago family, is a private detective with an intimate knowledge of...