Sara Paretsky brings out a collection of stories she’s written over the past twenty years in Love & Other Crimes. There are fourteen stories in the collection, which include eight featuring her creation, VI Warshawski.

It’s a mixed collection, all with that twisting plot that has been the hallmark of her books. They range from a very young VI’s first investigation, to the title story, where a modern VI uses her investigative experience from the years to clear a family friend of a murder charge, and end with a surprise twist.

In the introduction, Paretsky notes her early reading of the Golden Agers, and her love of late Victorian and early 20th-century crime fiction. Notes at the end of the stories describe their genesis and often give clues to bits within the stories.

Her story “Murder at the Century of Progress” pays homage to two greats: she brings back Race Williams, the first hardboiled detective originally created by Carroll John Daly (1923) and mixes his investigation with that of a woman who is the ultimate mix of Miss Marple and Amelia Butterworth, another favorite.

She uses the cover of the dithering spinster and gives her Charlotte Palmer a more adventurous back story we discover, as the two manage to foil the murder of none-other than fan dancer Sally Rand at the World’s Fair of 1933 called the Century of Progress.

PD James called Paretsky “the most remarkable” of modern crime writers. Readers who sift through this collection will surely agree.