Body Work

Bol

The fourteenth V.I. Warshawski novel from a crime author who writes with unbeatable pace and a passion for justice. Club Gouge: Chicago's edgiest night spot, where a woman calling herself the Body Artist invites the audience to use her naked body as a canvas.The show attracts all kinds of people, from a menacing cop to Ukrainian mobsters and Iraq war veterans. A tormented young painter comes too, and the designs she creates on the Body Artist drive one of the soldiers into a violent rage.When the painter is shot, the police assume the shell-shocked veteran went off the rails. But his family hires V.I. to clear his name - and the detective discovers a chain of ugly truths stretching from Iraq to Chicago's South Side.

Bol Partner

V.I. Warshawski's wayward niece Petra draws her to an edgy club and the Body Artist, who uses her own flesh as a canvas and invites the audience to do the same. Dark and disturbing, her performance awakens demons in two spectators: a young woman who paints her inner trauma on the Body Artist's back, and a Gulf War vet who seems to be experience post-traumatic stress disorder. When the young woman is shot and dies in V.I.'s arms, the vet's family employ V.I. to find the truth and prove their son's innocence. V.I.'s investigation uncovers the untold misery and evil in a snakepit of corruption.