Indemnity Only

Indemnity Only is a mystery novel written by Sara Paretsky.

V. I. Warshawski, a private detective, is employed by a man who calls himself John Thayer to find his son's girlfriend, Anita Hill. However, as she begins her search, V.I. almost immediately comes across Peter Thayer, John's son, dead. Her investigation takes a definite turn as she discovers ulterior motives for Anita's whereabouts to be found. In her search, Warshawski also discovers that the man who claims to be John Thayer turns out to be Andrew McGraw, the father of Anita Hill and a big labor union leader. It is later revealed that Anita Hill herself does not exist, that her real name is Anita McGraw, and she had reasons for running after Peter's murder that lead into a case much bigger than murder. It is quickly let on that our detective knows too much as she takes a beating from gang member Earl Smeissen early on. While Vic attempts to figure out who murdered Peter, she comes across many different roadblocks, including that in the same week, the real John Thayer is also killed, which turns her on to scams and connections in between the Knifegrinders labor union, the Ajax Insurance Company, and the Fort Dearborn Trust. Turns out that one of Earl's henchmen was identified at the scene of the crime by a witness. She utilizes Peter's younger sister, Jill Thayer, for personal family information and private documentation in her deceased father's office that support Vic's suspicions of insurance fraud, which Peter had first discovered. Throughout all this, Vic had been keeping her personal relationship with Ralph Devereaux away from the nonsense, up until the very end when it's discovered that his boss, Yardley Masters, has been not only orchestrating these crimes and frauds, but also even doing some of the killing himself. The novel ends in a dramatic scene at Ralph's apartment with Jill being held hostage by the aforementioned gangsters and Yardley trying to strike again. Vic, using her expert fighting skills and quick deduction abilities previously demonstrated in the book, averts his attacks and actually counters with life-saving moves for all the innocent people in the room. The book ends full circle with Anita finally being reunited with her father, but with a question of forgiveness in the air.

Sara Paretsky is best well known for her feminist perspective in her novels. This feminist writing style may have been started when Paretsky became “socially and politically active, especially in helping the lobby for abortion rights and later, after the passage of Roe v. Wade, becoming active in the National Abortion Rights Action League”. (Wyrick) Therefore, she tends to lean toward female independence in her novels, probably because it affected her more personally than other authors. A feminist kind of writing style might have also been started when Paretsky was with her young “frustration with traditional gender roles, voiced in her novels by different characters, but most consistently espoused by Lieutenant Bobby Mallory, that partly motivated the strong feminist tone her novels take” (Wyrick). Paretsky's writing style is mostly influenced by feminism, but she uses her "expertise in the insurance business" (Wyrick) as a background when she wrote Indemnity Only.