Title: "Total Recall" is truly forgettable
Review: In Sara Paretsky's 2001 V.I. Warshawski novel, the private investigator's boyfriend tells her that she bounces all over Chicago like a deranged ping pong ball.Listen up Sara. You're trying to tell yourself something.In "Total Recall" Warshawski spends far too much time in the car. In fact, she seems always to be in the car. And it's not that interesting a drive.When not scooping the Loop, Paretsky takes the reader down a tortured and twisted Nazi Germany survivor side plot that isn't very diverting and comes into 21st Century America in a very confusing fashion. But through it we learn more about V.I's physician friend Lottie.Still, learning about Lottie at this late date is too high a price to pay when she becomes the only character in the decades-old series with any depth.And if Sara Paretsky continues to introduce parallel plots, she'd do well to make sure that she gives V.I. as much of a life as she gives history a voice.
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