Fire Sale by Sara Paretsky

Sara Paretsky's mystery book about V.I.Warshawaki is in paperback. Not her latest. But somehow I missed reading it.  Now sweet reader if you have not read Paretsky and do not know who V.J. is, thee is in for a treat for a first time read.  Her name is above the title and bigger. A good sign she is a great writer. Fans who like the adventures of this tough woman P.I. be happy with this book.  I couldn't put it down. But I am a die hard fan. This is maybe the second in her books that push the button on social issues, morals, jobs and bossiness in the big Midwestern city of Chicago.
      She asked by a worker in a small job shop to find out who is sabotaging the workplace. Nothing big, nothing bad yet.  At the same time her old high school girls basketball coach has cancer and needs  her to coach the team.
      She has to juggle two jobs, both freebies and both in the old neighborhood of working poor and non-working poor, union and non-union and shady deals all over the place that result in murder, fires, cheating the workers, fear tactics and big money.
      These new jobs are non-paying, but sometime truth and justice always is. However, to keep gas in her car, dog food in the bowl, the mini-meals she manages to consume and pay expenses, like rent and things. She has to keep working on her other cases. She loses a lot a sleep, has more aches and pains that she thought possible since she works out all the time.
       Chain stores that try to control the market, who buy and sell people with the same lack of principles as they buy and sell products. She begins driving her car in the mean streets of the windy city, something she is not happy doing again. Weaving it back and forth from the rich part of town where the money begins to her old neighborhood where money is scarce unless you make some shady deals. Intrigue rides with her as she navigates the good, bad and very strange.
       She balances people trying to make a living, girls trying to play basketball with no equipment and no immediate needs of anyone contributing to help either cause.  There is a small kernel of truth that leads her the secret, scares her almost to death, unveils a murderer, bad, bad business and puts the American system under the microscope. Her life as usual is in the cross hairs of the bad guys, who shoot to kill, hit to bruise or maim. Her police friends don't like her crossing into their domain; politicians don't want her messing with folks who make big donations to the party. All of which just makes her fight harder to solve the crimes.  V.I. never likes to be told what to do or not do.
     It's a story about what happens in every town and government in the world. She makes us wonder about right and wrong.Where is the line between legal crimes and moral crimes?  Who solves those and what is the punishment and the outcome of good versus evil? V. I. takes on social issues in this book as in Blacklist.  You are left wondering about the difference between right and wrong.