When V.I. "Vic" Warshawski's young friend Consuelo goes into premature labor, the women are far from home, in this fourth book in the series, from 1987 (following Killing Orders). By the time Consuelo's doctor Malcolm Tregiere arrives, both she and her baby are dead at the local for-profit hospital. Vic assumes this was a tragic but unavoidable outcome, but after Dr. Tregiere is brutally murdered and Vic begins to investigate, her work uncovers a trail of greed and violence that leads her back to the hospital where Consuelo died. Since 1982, when private investigator V.I. Warshawski first appeared in Indemnity Only, Chicago author Sara Paretsky has been helping transform the image of women in crime fiction, and in the process has been named an MWA Grand Master and earned the CWA's Diamond Dagger. Hot-tempered and fiercely independent, Vic is unafraid of physical confrontations, relying on her karate skills and her Smith