V.I. Warshawski

V. I. Warshawski
Warshawski, as she appeared in volume 12 of Detective Conan
First appearance	Indemnity Only (1982)
Created by	Sara Paretsky
Portrayed by	Kathleen Turner (Film, BBC Radio) Sharon Gless (BBC Radio)
Information
Aliases	Victoria Iphigenia Warshawski
Gender	Female
Occupation	Private Investigator
Family	Anton "Tony" Warshawski (father) Gabriella Sestrieri (mother)
Spouse(s)	Dick Yarborough (ex-husband)
Nationality	American

Victoria Iphigenia "Vic" "V. I." Warshawski is a fictional private investigator from Chicago appearing in a series of detective novels and short stories written by Sara Paretsky.

With the exception of "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 Italian-born Gabriella Sestrieri, who, being half-Jewish, had to flee the Mussolini regime in 1941 and as a destitute immigrant met and married Anton "Tony" Warshawski, a Polish American Chicago police officer. Gabriella spoke Italian with her daughter, who became fluent in that language. On the other hand, the American-born Tony spoke only English with her, and she only picked up a few words of Polish from her father's mother.

Gabriella died of cancer when Vic was in high school; Tony died ten years later in 1976, implying that Vic was born about 1950. We also learn from Blood Shot (published as "Toxic Shock" in the UK) that Vic was last at her high school some 20 years previously, making the setting of this story in 1988, the year of the book’s publication. In an interview, Sara Paretsky pointed out that Warshawski aged in real time. However, in the 2010 "Hardball", Paretsky moved Warshawski's birth upwards to 1957, presumably since a 1950 birth would make her sixty years old in 2010, a bit too old for intensive physical activity. The change involved a considerable detailed retconing and re-writing many events of Warshawski's childhood, to fit with the new chronology.

Vic grew up on the southeast side of Chicago, in the shadow of shuttered steel mills and factories. Together with her cousin Boom-Boom she had many wild and dangerous adventures - becoming especially wild and reckless in the period of deep grief after her mother's death - and learning the techniques of street-fighting which would prove highly useful in her later career. She was involved in the girls' basketball team in her school, called "The Lady Tigers", and managed to enter the University of Chicago on a sports scholarship. During her university years, she became deeply involved in the counter-culture of the 1960s, taking part in freedom rides to rural Louisiana, traveling hundreds of miles to attend rallies addressed by Martin Luther King, demonstrating against the Vietnam War, and taking part in an underground abortion service. In the latter context, she first met with Dr. Lotty Herschel, who would become an important lifelong contact. However, being the daughter of a police officer whom she greatly loved and respected, Vic strongly objects to radicals calling the police "pigs".