V. I. Warshawski

Victoria Iphigenia “Vic” Warshawski is a fictional character in a series of detective novels and short stories by Sara Paretsky. She is a gritty, independent private investigator from Chicago. Aside from one short story, The Pietro Andromache, all of Warshawski's adventures are written in the first person. Victoria Iphigenia Warshawski, called 'Vic' by her friends is the daughter of the Italian-born Gabriella Sestrieri and Polish police officer T... more

Victoria Iphigenia “Vic” Warshawski is a fictional character in a series of detective novels and short stories by Sara Paretsky. She is a gritty, independent private investigator from Chicago. Aside from one short story, The Pietro Andromache, all of Warshawski's adventures are written in the first person. Victoria Iphigenia Warshawski, called 'Vic' by her friends is the daughter of the Italian-born Gabriella Sestrieri and Polish police officer Tony Warshawski, a member of the Chicago Police Department. Both her parents are deceased; Gabriella died of cancer, two years before Vic went to college, and ten years before the death of her father in 1976. This implies that Vic was born in about 1950. We also learn from Toxic Shock that Vic was last at her high school some 20 years previously; therefore this story was set in 1988, the year of the book’s publication. Sara Paretsky, in an interview, tells us that Vic ages in real time. Vic grew up on the Southeast Side of Chicago, in the... less