>> Maureen Corrigan: My name is Maureen Corrigan. I'm the book critic for Fresh Air on MPR. ^M00:00:05 [ Applause ] ^M00:00:09 And also a long time mystery columnist for the Washington Post. I have had the great pleasure and honor of interviewing Sara Paretsky a few times. And I have to tell you, every time I'm in her presence I am sincerely aware that I'm with someone who has transformed the mystery genre, and really put her own stamp on it. I went to the back cover of Shell Game, Sara Paretksy's latest novel and took a look at the biographical information on the back. And it's pretty simple and monumental. And I'm going to read it in part. Sara Paretsky is the bestselling author of 20 previous novels, including the renowned VI Warshovsky series. She is one of only four living authors alongside John Lacrae, Peter Lovesy and Lawrence Block to have received the Grand Master Award from the mystery writers of America and the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain. That's the award I want to see - ^M00:01:30 [ Applause ] ^M00:01:34 Sara was one of the founders of sisters in crime in 1986 and served as the organizations first president. She won last year the inaugural Sue Grafton Memorial Award honoring the best novel in a series featuring a female protagonist. It's such a delight and a thrill to be with you again. ^M00:01:58 [ Applause ] ^M00:02:02 >> Sara Paretsky: The Cartier Diamond Dagger it's - it's really a thrilling award and they give you this thing this big and which has on my new ruby diamond and sapphire in it. >> Maureen Corrigan: A real one? >> Sara Paretsky: Real. >> Maureen Corrigan: Oh. >> Sara Paretsky: And I lost it when I was on tour in Sweden many years ago. And I begged Cartier, and they gave me another one. But I don't think I can go back twice; so I leave it at home. Instead of wearing it - oh my - >> Maureen Corrigan: I wish you had brought it along. We're here to talk mostly about Shell Game, which if you haven't read it is a superb Warshovsky novel. But Shell Game came out last year. I wanted to talk about a more recent publication of yours, okay? >> Sara Paretsky: Yeah. >> Maureen Corrigan: And that is a letter to the editor that you sent to the New York Times book review a couple of months go about a mystery round-up that had run in the Times. And you sent a letter objecting to that mystery round up. And if I can, I'd just like to read the first three sentences of your letter to the editor, which had me laughing uncontrollably for at least 10 minutes. You said, "To the editor, when I started reading Vanessa Friedman's Thriller Round-Up, published on June 2 of this year, I wanted to fly to New York and stand screaming outside your building." You usually don't read letters like that in the New York Times. "Of course I'm always delighted, thrilled when women writers are recognized. But Friedman repeats the tired old trope that women have been on the margins of the thriller world forever. And are only breaking into it in this hashtag, Me Too era." I would like you to give us some background. What prompted that letter? What you were reacting to, and if you received any responses to that letter? >> Sara Paretsky: The round up, excuse me, the round up that Tread Mill did was on thrillers that feature strong women characters. Even more annoying, almost more annoying than her introduction which was that we had been on the margins and were just starting to be heard was the first two books she reviewed were by men. It's like what? ^M00:04:43 [ Laughter ] ^M00:04:45 But here's the thing. Women's voices, we bubble up periodically like carrots in a stew, and then we're pushed down again and we disappear. And I - I - my reaction covered a lot of ground, which I'll try not to - to go on forever about. And you know more about the history than I do. But 19th century women thriller writers helped define and create the genre. Anna Catherine Greene wrote - had an investigative - investigating detective, consulting detective 10 years before Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle wanted Greene's sales he wrote her - he wanted advice from her on how to market his books. She was the bestselling writer on both sides of the Atlantic. And he writes about seeing wagons going down the strand, piled high with Green's novels, wanting his own books to have that same cachet. Nobody knows who she is anymore. And we all know who Sherlock Holmes is. So all this time, all these years women keep writing, keep having voices, keep creating strong characters, but - but somehow we're just not there. And I think this - this bubbles through all of society. So you start asking whether this woman candidate, this woman candidate is electable because it's novel, its novel to have a woman doing something. If we started realizing that woman are always doing these things. That we're just part of this discourse then the whole conversation would change I think. ^M00:06:39 [ Applause ] ^M00:06:45 >> Maureen Corrigan: When I read your letter to the editor I was also trying to imagine what was going on in the reviewers mind, that she would have sort of structured the whole round up that way, as though this was a new advent in the history of detective fiction. And I wondered if maybe it feels new because we have so many woman writers writing in that woman in trouble genre or girl in trouble genre. And that feels like - like Gone Girl. That feels like I don't know almost a new strain in detective fiction as opposed to the kind of novels that you write that Sue Grafton used to write when she was alive. That maybe - maybe that's why she's writing - >> Sara Paretsky: And I also think that there's a way in which one of the things that's going on in contemporary thrillers that really troubles me is that the woman protagonish whether novels really by men or by woman often has to have been terribly abused and victimized like in Mohater's books or Steve Glarson's books. So she can't come to the work out of just the joy of being a professional and out there on stage solving problems. She has to be in recovery from terrible rape and abuse and we're given every detail of the rap and abuse. And I'm not sure what that is. I think - I always come back to can women take up space? And we can take up space if we're victims, but we can't take up space if we're powerful. >> Maureen Corrigan: That's a disturbing thought. >> Sara Paretsky: It is, but all that's changing. By tomorrow morning we'll all be different. ^M00:08:39 ^M00:08:43 >> Maureen Corrigan: I want to talk about Shell Game, which is a novel in which a woman takes up space not because she's somehow earned it by being victimized, but because she owns it. She's made the effort to own it. It's your 19th VI Warshovsky novel. And one of the things I do admire about your writing is you really make an effort not to go stale, not to repeat yourself and you really keep reaching, reaching, reaching and I think your novels have grown more ambitious certainly throughout the years. In Shell Game, you've --- you're weaving together a lot of different plots and you've got one plot which I would almost label the traditional mystery plot where there's - there's this mystery about a stolen antiquity, which almost feels like the rules for Nancy Drew novel writing. You always have to have some kind of stolen treasure. And then you've also got plot lines that have to do with the situation of undocumented immigrant workers in this country. You've got another plot line that has to do with a long lost niece by marriage of VI's who has been abused, assaulted by a network of powerful men. You know almost kind of anticipating some of that Jeffrey Epstein horror that we've been living with over the last few weeks. What's it - what are the challenges of writing what - as you know, Graham Greene famously called entertainments. And yet at the same time reaching for writing fiction that's also politically and socially pointed. I think that I come at it slightly differently in that I'm not trying to write fiction that's politically and socially pointed. I saw recently in a review is it Natasha or Natalie Ginsberg, the Italian writer? Anyway - >> Maureen Corrigan: It's Natalie. >> Sara Paretsky: Natalie, you're right. Her - she was a writer in Italy in the 40's, 50's, 60's and her books are just now being translated into English and re-issued. And she lived through the second World War. Her husband and her brothers were anti-fascist activists who were imprisoned, tortured, killed and the second World War formed the light motif of most of her fiction. And she was criticized for this, why couldn't she leave the war alone? And she wrote that - she thought that the writer was a river and that the writer went with the current of the river and wrote the images that were reflected in the water as she - as she flowed with that current. And for me the images that are reflected in the water are - are urgent matters that affect us all day in and day out. And they just end up being the stuff of my stories. I think I was particularly concerned at the start of this story because of the - at that time I - so the book was published in October of 2018 and I started work on it in the summer of 2017. And I was already deeply concerned about the fate of - of refugees and asylum seekers who were routinely being denied access to this country. And then I always have a subtext with immigrant stories in the sense that I'm one of the American Jews who was born in this country to a family that lived here, but most of my family in Europe. My entire family in Europe was murdered in the [Inaudible] and so the fact that we shut our doors in the 30's and 40's this just feels really personal to me that we're doing it again now. And so those issues because it is so personal to me come into my stories. When I started writing Shell Game and I'm not a chess player. I can't think five moves ahead. I have an idea, I write, it doesn't work. I move to a different way of trying to tell the story. There's a Syrian refugee who is undocumented in this country and who was a poet - is a poet and I started writing his poetry. I actually wanted - I had couplets that I was going to start each chapter with, but my English editor said that would be like George Elliott, nobody would read the book because they would feel they were being given a Victorian novel. So I stopped with that, but I wanted - I had written about him and VI having an affair. And he was supposed to be a significant character in this book, but the story just wouldn't gel around him. And so he ends up being kind of the - the main mover in a way - the main mover of events but - but he's very little onstage and I had to abandon this very beautiful love scene between the two of them. And so she got her second choice, the director of the Oriental Institute of Middle Eastern Museum and Scholarly Institute in Chicago. ^M00:14:25 ^M00:14:29 >> Maureen Corrigan: He's not bad. >> Sara Paretsky: No my favorite - well not my favorite scene, but I had a lot of fun, she's - she's helping them find someone who has broken into the museum. And he holds her by her feet upside down, out the window so that she can examine the wall. And I thought, "I want to do that." And I tried to talk the man who was actually the director of the institute into trying it with me, but he blenched. >> Maureen Corrigan: Thinking about University lawsuits I guess, but you have gotten the kind of pushback I've read it online from readers who - who essentially say what you know people say sometimes to Bruce Springsteen, "Shut up and play." I don't want to hear about the politics, shut up and play. Shut up and tell us a mystery story and stop - stop engaging in all this other stuff, you know? And has your publisher or people in publishing industry, have you gotten that from - I don't know I guess you can't really talk about that here. But I wonder if - if it's ever been suggested to you that it would be wiser for you to leave some topics alone? >> Sara Paretsky: I don't think it's ever been put to me that it would be wiser. I think that it - that it's stated that I would be more marketable. But not that anyone wants me to stop doing it, but t's a choice that I can make. I actually think I might be less marketable because I wouldn't be writing - I wouldn't be writing what I care about. I used to be published - my publisher used to be Danielle Steele's editor. And she said you know if someone like me ogling Danielle Steele sales wanted to write those books, they would just fall flat because Steele writes what is in her heart and it may not be what's in my heart. But it's you know, and that's what her readers respond to. If it was fake they wouldn't - they wouldn't be lining up to buy it. And so I think if I drop that aspect of my work, my books would be flat and even less - less marketable. One of the things that I started - I've gotten more mail from - negative mail from about Shell Game than any other book that I've written. And here are two things I want to say about that. One is that all of my books are political but people seem to think that if it deals specifically with party, politics or presidential actions that that makes it political. If it deals with social justice issues, it's not political and they don't mind it. That - and that boggles me, but that just is how it is. But the other thing I started wondering about that I - that I want to explore is what did people read in - in the Third Reich or in Franco Spain? What did they read? People must have read things - they must have been genre fiction of some kind. They weren't all sitting around reading good or Suranta's. And I've been trying to find that out but I - I'm very unskillful online researcher. I - every time I try to go through the University of Chicago online search systems I end up getting things about Babylon. I don't know why. I think no matter what I'm asking about, I think I confuse the computer so much it just says "Okay Babylon." >> Maureen Corrigan: Well you know please don't - please don't hear my questions as any kind of request from me that you ever change what you're doing because what you're doing is - it does come from the heart and it's so vivid and it's so important as well as entertaining; it does all of that. >> Sara Paretsky: That's good. >> Maureen Corrigan: We're talking about the topic of immigrants and immigration and one of the things that really strikes me about Shell Game is VI we - those of us who have been following her from the 1980's onward, we know her background. She's Italian, she's Polish. She's from that community in Chicago White working class, ethnic but now by the time we get to Shell Game we're in a different Chicago. And VI is going into immigrant communities, they're not hers. So she's - she's in an area where they're for instance a lot of South Asian immigrants. And there's an interesting scene where she's trying to find a young woman in that community and she realizes that the folks passing by on the street are looking at her as a White older woman and thinking she must be an immigration agent. She's somebody to avoid, watch out for, which is kind of turning the tables on VI. What - what's your familiarity with those areas, those communities in Chicago now? Because you're such a Chicago writer and I think of you the way I think of Chandler. Chandler owns it, LA; you own Chicago. ^M00:20:06 What - what's your familiarity? Did you have to have guides introduce you to those communities? I'd like to hear about that research? >> Sara Paretsky: Well one of the things that I - that I do is one of the things that we've learned is that if a lot of people show up for a deportation hearing the deportee is less likely to have the papers executed and is given another six month extension. So I belong to - I don't belong in the sense, but I'm part of a group that responds to requests for witnesses at deportation hearings. And through them I've met people mostly in Chicago's Latinex community, but to some extent also in the Syrian immigrant community. And I wouldn't say that I'm deeply knowledgeable or engaged, but - but that that's been kind of my window onto these communities. And also onto kind of like unconscious stereotypes that - that you build up so the - the first Syrian spokesperson that I met was a woman who looked like she stepped out of an English romance novel with her rose petal complexion and blond hair escaping from under her - her headscarf. But - but Syrian and it's - it's just been I think really it's frustrating, it's infuriating and it's also profoundly moving to be with families who have been in this country for - there may be three generations, and one person is undocumented. And is in danger of being sent back, where the children are now young adults - who are doca young adults and are on the edge of their seats because English is the language they know. And United States is the country they know. Yeah. So it's - I - I don't - you know I can read about the neighborhood and the geographical boundaries, but I'm not actually in those neighborhoods as much as I'm interacting with people in these settings for hearings. >> Maureen Corrigan: Yeah. I'm going to change - change the tone for a second and just tell you that every time I open up a new VI Worshovsky novel I kind of cross my fingers that VI is going to have an encounter with her ex-husband, [Inaudible] Yarboro. And those of you who follow VI through her life know what I'm talking about. Dick Yarboro is a corporate lawyer and he and VI were married briefly in their youth. You have a great Dorothy Parker line that you give to VI in this novel where she says of that marriage, for whatever it was 27 months. >> Sara Paretsky: Something like that. >> Maureen Corrigan: Dick pretended that he was interested in social justice and I pretended that I was interested in his career. And that was kind of it. But he's - he's a major character in this novel. And I love reading about him because he's so slimy and he's so awful and they so don't belong together and he keeps her waiting. She schedules an appointment with him in his corporate law office and he deliberately keeps her waiting in the outside office. And finally she gets down on the carpet of the waiting room and begins doing leg lifts, which causes him to run in right away. It's a great scene where she's being sassy and impudent and he's - he's responding to that. I wanted to ask you this, how did you ever put her together with him? Why did you do that to her? >> Sara Paretsky: That's such a good question and of course he's gotten more dreadful with time. >> Maureen Corrigan: He has. >> Sara Paretsky: Than he was in the beginning. There's one book, I can' remember know which one it is where he also shows up and plays a roll and she remembers that he was very attached to her father. And that was after her father's funeral, that - that the marriage really finally disintegrated. But the softer side of Dick has vanished as he's gotten richer and more successful. And I don't know, I have just going to say a good friend, and not reveal her identity. She was married to - she was putting her husband through law school. And the day that - this was in the 60's. So the day that she came home to tell him that she thought the marriage was over because she'd been mistaken in her sexuality. He announced that he was having an affair with the woman whom she thought was her closest straight friend. And so it just - these are mistakes of youth. But also I think that - sorry, I'm sorry. I keep trying to cover up the mic when I'm hacking. But you know she says in one of the novels that she - she wanted to belong to the Anglo world that he represented. And I had another friend, am I rambling too much? I had another friend German, Jewish film scholar who left Germany and came to the States when she was in her 20's. And she hated being the only Jew for 500 miles around. And she married the son of an SS colonel. And the marriage floundered. He mistreated her pet duck and then he said he decided his father had been right all along and that Jews really were responsible for everything that was wrong in Europe, and so that was kind of the end of the marriage. That was a more extreme version of what - >> Maureen Corrigan: So it happens. >> Sara Paretsky: All I can say is that people do make mistakes. And fortunately many of them recover from those mistakes. >> Maureen Corrigan: Well I hope this isn't the end of Dick, although he's put in his place in this novel, isn't he? >> Sara Paretsky: He's not in the new book. Too many people are not in the new book. There wasn't room for them, but they'll all have to - the one that's being published in 2020. They'll have to come back for the next one after that. >> Maureen Corrigan: We talked a little bit about VI's background. I just want to touch on some of the things I learned about your background from a wonderful memoir you published a few years ago, called Writing in an Age of Silence. And things I didn't know about you that you had four brothers and your father had a PhD. Your mother went to college and was admitted to med school, but didn't go. And that they treated you very differently from how your brothers were treated when the matter of college came up. You were basically told go to the University of Kansas and that was the only choice. Otherwise, no college, right? And we don't have three hours but I wonder if you could give me - give all of us sort of a taste of what made you with that kind of - with those kinds of messages being sent to you by your parents. How did you get from there to here? You have a PhD, you have an advanced degree, an MBA as well as an undergrad degree of course. And you're Sara Paretsky. How do you that? >> Sara Paretsky: You know there were plusses as well as minuses came from - my parents were great readers. My mother was a great story teller and social justice advocate. So those were things that informed my life as well. I think that I was a very angry person and I was - the PhD was - I was determined to prove to my father that I was as intelligent as my brothers. And that was kind of - that wasn't better - better guidance and advice might have saved the world another dissertation. But I was also yeah, I wrote from a very young age and just things, short stories, poetry, my posthumous works these are. But I couldn't - I didn't imagine writing for publication. I didn't imagine having a voice that other people wanted to hear. ^M00:30:12 And in fact, speaking - I have friends who tell me that back 40 years ago before all this started happening they thought they were going deaf when I was talking to them, because my brothers and I all developed a habit of speaking really softly because the criticism over what we said was so ferocious within the family setting. And so it took a long time to develop a sense of strength and a sense of voice. And two things really made a big difference in my life. One was second wave feminism and I began seeing that my story and again seeing a context for my story that was' personal to me, it wasn't because there was something wrong with me. It was a social universal or at least very widespread issue. And the other thing is that unlike VI I married very fortunately. I married a man who - I'm sorry, I can't go on. ^M00:31:17 ^M00:31:23 He died recently, but he had great confidence in my voice. And he was endlessly supportive and proud of what I did. And it made it very possible. And in fact, finishing work on the most recent book which I sent to my editors a week ago, a week ago today. I didn't know if I could finish it without - Corny always called himself tail gun Charlie. He was the man who had my back. But I did finish it, so I guess I can go on. ^M00:32:03 [ Applause ] ^M00:32:12 I'm so sorry to lose my composure but my next number will be very happy, peppy one. >> Maureen Corrigan: No it's so - it's why people love you. You are in your books, and you are authentic. So - ^M00:32:25 ^M00:32:29 I did want to go back to asking you something about the form, because we both like to think about this amazing hardboiled detective fiction form that's an all American product and - and it's a form that you've reworked and I think you've expanded the possibilities of it and women of your generation, women writers of your generation certainly broke open so many barriers. One thing that you do that I feel like not enough detective fiction writers avail themselves of the possibilities of the series form as being a big extended novel. And that you - you're always adding to VI's alternative family, you know a family of affinity, a family of choice. You know we've got people who have been there from the beginning like Mr. Contraris and Lotty Hershel. But you know of late you've added people like Petra and Neece and in this novel you've got two nieces who pop up after many years of not being in touch, two nieces by marriage and - and VI seems to - not a maternal role but certainly a beloved female mentor role to them and certainly someone who also schools them in the possibilities of what a woman can be, and enlarges those possibilities. And you've also aged VI and - not quite to where she actually should be if she in real life. Re-reading Shell Game in preparation for talking with you I was struck by how many chapters open up with VI saying "I was exhausted." >> Sara Paretsky: And rightly so. >> Maureen Corrigan: And she's also waking up a lot in the middle of the night and her mind is roaring and I can relate to that. How far can you take that? >> Sara Paretsky: Well you know I think - I think it got to be extreme in Shell Game, her exhaustion and so I tried to be mindful of that in working on the next book. There's also I would say sometimes I have a friend, a writer in Chicago Carol Anshaw, very under-appreciated fiction writer who has taken up painting. And she calls herself an auto didact which I think sounds like an extinct bird. But as a writer I'm an auto didact so it's hard for me to make a separation between who I am and what I'm writing. And actually had a very funny letter in England there's an armanex society and the president of the armanex society wrote me - actually I feel very vain about this, I'm bragging about it. He said in your early books VI drank lots of lovely Armagnac and lately she hasn't, what happened? And I thought oh my God, poor VI. Because I no longer can handle alcohol well. I had inadvertently dialed back her alcohol. And so I'm making a conscious effort to let the girl detective drink more. And - >> Maureen Corrigan: Here, here. >> Sara Paretsky: And so I'm thinking also because I'm not sleeping well and I'm waking up with my legs feeling like they're encased in concrete. No she doesn't need to be doing that. She's younger, she's vital, she's fit. And she knows how to sleep. >> Maureen Corrigan: Well I am - as I think many people here. I'm looking forward to the next outing and seeing this rejuvenated VI. And having her take a little break from these escapades in the forest in the middle of the night. And everything else that she's doing. She's incredible. I would love to talk some more, but I want to open up in the time we have left, I'd like to give people the opportunity to ask questions and have some conversation with the audience, because you have a lot of fans here who have been following VI since the very beginning I'm sure. So there are microphones in the middle of the aisles. Please don't be shy. I went on too long and we only have about I don't know seven minutes left for questions, comments. Five minutes left, oh my goodness. So please jump up if you - there's anything that you would like to say or ask. >> Sara Paretsky: You can ask me anything, and if I don't know I'll make up the answer. ^M00:37:26 ^M00:37:32 >> Hi. I just want to thank you. I've read your books all of them, and I always wait for the next one to come out. And I just want to say how much I appreciate your courage in terms of taking on some of these harder issues. I appreciate your feminist perspective in VI and you know the approach she takes to life, because she's really a no shit kind of person. So I just want to say thank you very much for being such a strong role model for women and speaking out on social justice issues that are very important. Thank you. ^M00:38:14 [ Applause ] ^M00:38:22 >> Hi, I wanted to question - to ask a question about technique. Do you outline your novels? Do you write the scenes and then put them together? Do you have a special method? >> Sara Paretsky: The question is about process. Do I outline or do I write scenes and put them together. You know I think people who outline are people who I think of chess players versus tennis players and maybe that's not understanding either game well. Chess players can see this, this happening. And I can't, I have to write and see how it's happening. And if it - if I have characters in motion who are telling the story, well I have to throw it out and go back and start over. So I think of myself more as a tennis player having to respond to the ball in motion as it comes to me. I always start with the idea of the mega crime, the big crime that's driving the story, and I know who has committed that crime and why. But all of the - the side characters that I need and the sub plots I need for telling that story, those I get to by trial and error. My fourth big Bitter Medicine, I actually wrote through from beginning to end without any deviation or discarding. And I thought oh boy I know what I'm doing now. And wrong, that was the only book that happened with. Shell Game, this was the seventh storyline that I tried before I got to the right one, which is why I write more slowly than my publishers like. >> Hi. So your books and Sue Grafton's books are considered - because you have strong female protagonist and the hardboiled detective fiction that wasn't strongly representative previously to your books. I was just wondering, because many people cite you as inspiration. Are there any young authors or any currently that you say yes they're carrying on the mantle that I had you know, that we started? >> Sara Paretsky: There are a lot of really good writers right now. And of course my brain has become completely blank now as I'm on the spot with this. But I think - I never get her name right. Rachel Hall - ^M00:41:02 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:41:07 >> Sara Paretsky: Rachel Hall Housel, whose books are set in LA. I think she's - she's done some stand alones and some cop novels and - and I like her kind of tough woman police detective. I think she does a great job with that. Someone who is not brand new but sort of the next generation after me, whose books I love is Nevada Barr. In the UK Denise Myna, fabulous writer. They're a lot - read Maurine's reviews and more will come to you. ^M00:41:46 ^M00:41:52 It is so hard to see up here >> Hi I have a question about the VI character since she's so much a part of you. Did you ever get mad at her? >> Sara Paretsky: VI, do I take it personally? Do I get mad at her? I think the shoe is on the other foot. I think if she actually knew me she would think that I'm such a whip that she would reject me as the person who was writing her - her memoirs so to speak. Yeah we had rats in my basement not too long ago and I made my - I make my dog come down the stairs with me, and she has to be bribed. She's like a rug with a heartbeat. She has to be bribed with liver treats to get up and come down the basement stairs with me, but I think VI would just be there. Maybe she'd pull out her Smith and Wesson and put a few bullets in them, I don't know. >> Maureen Corrigan: Does she inspire you at all to be bolder because I was thinking - I actually was thinking of her this morning, living in a row house in DC and every once in a while the neighbor to the left parks his second car in a way that blocks our little garage. And I said to my husband this morning, "I'm going to go over and knock on his door" and I was thinking about VI. I was finishing Shell Game and I felt like she had rubbed off on me some. >> Sara Paretsky: I think - does she rub off on me? Yes to have a voice and not - not be sort of passive aggressive in situations like that. And I actually have an incoming neighbor who is building a mansion right up against my property line and - or the property line between us. And there have been issues, some of which I've been passive aggressive about, for instance he's a professor of economics and so in my new book the bad guy is an economist. ^M00:44:02 [ Laughter ] ^M00:44:05 That's pretty passive aggressive. But I've also been more forthright when they've spilled stuff on my car, demanding that they pay to clean my car and things like that. So yeah I've - yeah. The girl detective strikes back. >> Maureen Corrigan: In a way that Nancy Drew somehow never rubbed off except maybe her language. I think we're out of time according to - 20 seconds. Anybody have - have a quick last question? Oh yep, someone is running to the mic. >> Quickly I wonder if you could tell us if there are any predecessors in the genre, who were possibly a big influence on you? >> Sara Paretsky: There's a very - there's a writer named Michael - Michael [Inaudible] who again under recognized writer. He was from Indianapolis, at the same time Parker was writer the Spencer novels, Michael was writing a series. And he was really the first boiled less hard writer and someone whose characters was - the women in it were respected. They were vamps or virgins or victims and it was at the time that I was trying to formulate VI and trying to figure out how to write a book And it was helpful to have his example that yeah there was room in the genre for that kind of respect for - for women. >> Maureen Corrigan: I'm - I've got a sign in front of me that says "Wrap it up." That's rather rude; so we are going to wrap it up. Thank you so, so much Sara. >> Sara Paretsky: Thank you. Thank you all.