Novel: Deadlock

Overview

Sara Paretsky’s Deadlock, published in 1984, is the second novel featuring Chicago private investigator V. I. Warshawski. The story fuses a personal loss with a tour through the Great Lakes shipping industry, as V. I. probes the suspicious death of her beloved cousin, Bohdan “Boom Boom” Warshawski, a former professional hockey star turned commodities broker. Officialdom writes his demise off as an accident at the Chicago locks. V. I., stubborn and grieving, refuses the tidy answer and follows a trail that runs from dockside bars to corporate boardrooms, through union offices, insurance firms, and onto ore boats and freighters that stitch together the inland seas.

Setup

Boom Boom’s body is pulled from the cold, churning water near the lock gates, his fall explained away as misstep and bad luck. The account clashes with what V. I. knows: he had a ruined knee and was cautious around heights, and he left behind scattered notes about a series of “accidents” afflicting ships moving grain and ore. When her apartment is searched and someone tries to bully her off the case, the pressure itself becomes evidence that there is more at stake than a tragic fall.

The investigation

V. I. maps Boom Boom’s last days and discovers he had been asking questions about shipping schedules, repair invoices, and insurance coverage. She meets captains, dockworkers, and longshoremen who hint at cut corners and quiet payoffs, and she encounters executives who speak in euphemisms about risk while their vessels keep colliding in narrow channels or suffering timely mechanical failures. Police skepticism dogs her, even from old acquaintances, but medical allies patch her up after rough encounters, and her street sense keeps her moving.

The waterfront world

Paretsky anchors the mystery in the details of Great Lakes commerce. V. I. studies the choreography of entering and leaving locks, the delicate balance of ballast and cargo, and the way a small sabotage can produce a big claim. She learns how a stuck rudder, a failed winch, or a misplaced tug can turn an ordinary passage into an insurance event. The locks themselves, confined spaces of concrete and steel where water, mass, and time must be measured precisely, serve as both setting and metaphor, compressing danger and forcing choices.

Revelations

Patterns emerge: ships controlled by interconnected companies keep suffering mishaps that generate payouts, while competitors face sudden trouble that forces distressed sales. The conspiracy blends boardroom strategy with dockside muscle. Insurance policies are structured to profit from “accidents, ” maintenance is deferred to maximize risk, and whistleblowers are silenced. Boom Boom, curious and well-liked on the waterfront, had stumbled onto the scheme and was lured to the locks under pretense before being eliminated.

Climax and resolution

The case crescendos on the water. V. I. is trapped aboard a freighter and nearly killed amid steel bulkheads and cold spray as saboteurs attempt to stage another incident. She turns the machinery of the scheme against its architects, uses the paper trail Boom Boom started, and forces a confrontation that exposes the collusion between owners, fixers, and their hired hands. The killers are unmasked, the fraud is documented, and Boom Boom’s name is cleared of recklessness. The victory is costly; V. I. ends bruised but unbowed, carrying grief and hard-earned certainty.

Themes and significance

Deadlock marries a private eye’s fierce loyalty to a critique of corporate impunity. It explores how profit can twist safety into a calculated gamble and how power stretches from mahogany tables to the men who haul lines on icy decks. It deepens V. I. Warshawski’s character as a woman navigating male-dominated spaces, sports, shipping, policing, using wit, empathy, and stubborn moral clarity. As a second outing, it broadens the series’ canvas, turning the Great Lakes into a living backdrop and proving that personal stakes can drive an investigation straight through the heart of an industry.