Tribune

Bleeding Kansas by Sara Paretsky
Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99

BACK in the dark days of the 1980s, one bright spot was the emergence of the sub-genre of feminist crime fiction. On both sides of the Atlantic, women writers were muscling in on this hitherto testosterone-driven area and their heroines – invariably described as feisty – pursued an agenda that was, directly or indirectly, a challenge to male assumptions about crime and policing.

Writers such as Val McDermid, Gillian Slovo, Sue Grafton and Tribune’s own Joan Smith forged successful careers with books whose roots were in the detective tradition but whose politics questioned and extended the genre.

One of the first on the scene in 1982 was Sara Paretsky with Indemnity Only and its hard as nails heroine VI Warshawski was to appear in 11 further novels. I enjoyed the early books but Paretsky and I parted company in the mid-1990s with Tunnel Vision. The franchise was becoming stale and the non-Warshawski books did not appeal.

Paretsky’s new novel, Bleeding Kansas, is a stand-alone and isn’t part of the crime genre; it is a generational saga set in rural Kansas. For 150 years, two families have farmed the Kaw River Valley, their clans intertwining in love and politics. As is the way of these things, an outsider – urban, sophisticated Gina – is the catalyst for seismic convulsions and the eruption of long-buried emotions which upset settled patterns and change lives.

This is a slow-burn book which makes few concessions to the casual reader; the storyline is convoluted, the characters opaque and confusing. It is most definitely not for lovers of plot-driven action novels such as the Warshawski series.

However, if you persevere, there are rewards; this book says much about the doubts and fears of heartland America and the effects of conflicts on communities, from the Civil War through Vietnam to September 11 and Iraq.

Paretsky’s next book, Hardball, is part of the VI Warshawski series. It will be interesting to compare and contrast this with the meditative Bleeding Kansas. Ultimately, though, the latter is a fascinating read in its own right and a window on an America that is, perhaps, on the cusp of better times.

Peter Whittaker