SOURCE: “Living ‘Openly and With Dignity’—Sara Paretsky's New-Boiled Feminist Fiction,” in MidAmerica XII: The Yearbook of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, edited by David D. Anderson, The Midwestern Press, 1985, pp. 120-35.

In the following essay, Bakerman traces how Paretsky redefines the genre of hard-boiled detective fiction to include a strong, independent female protagonist.

Gumshoe. Shamus. Hawkshaw. Dick. Peeper. Snooper. Sleuth. No matter what he is called, the hard-boiled detective, or private eye, is an American institution, as native as jazz, as recognizable as Mickey Mouse, as appealing as apple pie, as durable as the game of baseball. Cloaked in many disguises … he has become one of the most familiar figures in American cultural mythology.

(Geherin, 1)

Twenty dollars per hour—sixteen if you're a family member—hires one of the best private investigators in the business: V. I. Warshawski, the hard-boiled hero created by Sara...