�The thing about Sara Paretsky is, she�s tough�not because she observes the bone-breaker conventions of the private-eye genre but because she doesn�t flinch from examining old social injustices others might find too shameful (and too painful) to dig up.� � The New York Times Book Review�Doctors take days off � why not PIs?� V.I. Warshawski demands. But when America�s hardest-working private eye goes clubbing, a stranger is shot and dies in her arms.V.I. has been visiting Club Gouge, Chicago�s edgiest nightspot, where a woman known as the Body Artist turns her naked body into a canvas for the audience to paint on.The show attracts all kinds of people, from a menacing off-duty cop to Ukrainian mobsters and Iraq war vets � and V.I.�s impetuous cousin, Petra. A tormented young painter shows up, too, and the intricate designs she creates on the Body Artist drive one of the vets into a violent rage.When the painter is shot, the cops figure it�s an easy collar � PTSD vet goes off the rails, stalks then kills young woman. But the vet�s family hires V.I. to clear his name, and the detective uncovers a chain of ugly truths that stretches all the way from Iraq to Chicago�s South Side.