Sara Paretsky

Interviewed by Barry Forshaw

Amazingly, we haven't done it before: Crime Time has never talked to one of the most distinctive and original voices in the genre. The appearance of Hard Time (Penguin) was the perfect occasion for us to catch up with the creator of V. I. Warshawski…

You have a particularly dedicated British following…

I'm very pleased by that. And actually, Livia Gollancz, who bought my very first book, initiated that. It was a great feeling to become part of such a prestigious list - a really enviable place to be.

You seem to be at pains in your books to avoid stultifying. Do you make a conscious effort to rigorously avoid repetition?

Well, I'm glad you feel that. It's just a constant struggle when you're writing about a series character, it's hard to keep that character alive. When I felt that I needed a break from V. I., I wrote Ghost Country, which was a very different kind of book. And I'm glad that I did, as I was able to come back to her in Hard Time with a better way of writing about her.

The new book tackles a lot of topical issues.

I'm concerned about issues such as globalisation of the media. It seems to me that for any government to function properly - and I suppose I'm principally talking about the States - it requires a diligent, independent press. And when the big movie companies own all the media outlets and the publishing companies, that's not a healthy state of affairs. So when I was writing Hard Time, I was thinking how all these global conglomerates run things with their own particular agendas in mind, and I thought about those disenfranchised people who don't have a voice or a defence.

Would that describe V. I. in this book? She expresses some trenchant views on these matters.

She's someone who's not prepared to compromise, and that makes her very lonely and very vulnerable.

Isn't it a problem, when dealing with issues as big as this, to keep a single individual at the very centre of the narrative? Or is there a danger that her concerns will be eclipsed?

Yes, there is. But hopefully the situations I put her in are strong enough to make the reader care. I start the book by having her nearly run over this woman who's been left in the road. Now, because it's a novel, and things have to happen in a somewhat more ordered way than they might in real life, I made this a thread that ultimately connects her to these global conglomerates. Some of her concerns are idiosyncratic: can one person continue to be true to his or her own principles in a world of compromise?

Is V. I. brave or foolhardy?

That's an interesting question. I try to make her brave, but not in any simplistic way. Actually, that's an issue that greatly concerns me personally. When I think of Hitler and the Nazi period, I think of those people who behaved with tremendous courage in the face of this appalling threat, and think: would I do that? There's part of me that thinks: no, I wouldn't, more's the pity.

So is your protagonist your surrogate in that respect?

Yes, but I think of her as a person who speaks more than a person who acts. It's what she says that matters most to me.

Are you bored with the endless comparisons with Sue Grafton?

Well, it's had one effect: I used to read her and enjoy her, when it was just a question of the fact that we had both started at roughly the same time, and happened to hit on several similar ideas, such as an older male confidant for our heroines. But now I feel that I can't read her for that very reason - I have to fight any inadvertent influence. And I guess she feels the same.