Indemnity Only

V. I. Warshawski, Book 1

By: Sara Paretsky

Narrated by: Susan Ericksen

Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

In this gripping adventure - the first V.I. Warshawski mystery - America’s top private eye is tossed into a dangerous adventure when a seemingly straightforward assignment becomes complicated and deadly.

Hired by a man who calls himself John Thayer, V.I.’s assignment is to find Thayer’s son Peter’s missing girlfriend. But when V.I. finds young Peter’s dead body instead, her client disappears. Her efforts to track down her client and learn his true identity take her deep into a labyrinth of fraud and violence.

By the time V.I. figures out the answers she is in a race to find the missing young woman - before the murderers do.

©1991 Sara Paretsky (P)2011 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Love this series

Great start into the series. Since I Started on tunnel vision which I believe is the 8th book in this series I can see how it all started and how V.I. is always V.I.

The novel that got Sara Paretsky’s VI Warshawsky started

Have read Sara Paretsky’s novels for years, finding them in the public library. I decided to find the first one that got her started. I loved it. As a Chicagoan, I love plotting out VI’s movement’s across the city. VI is a great character, full of nuance. I love that the book is a history lesson of the technology available in 1982. Recommend this book!

Early Paretsky

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I enjoyed this but Sara's books have gotten better over time
I

Would you recommend Indemnity Only to your friends? Why or why not?

yes

Have you listened to any of Susan Ericksen’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Yes, not as good as others but good

Was Indemnity Only worth the listening time?

yes

Susan Ericksen

I decided to try this series because of the Narrator. I love Susan Ericksen's narration for JD Robb's In Death Series. I do speed up the play back. I use 1.75. I think these women would talk faster and it sounds good to me.
For a first book in the series it was a good start. It has me interested in learning more about Vic.

Some good, some bad.

I don’t quite know how I feel about this. The story was decent—nothing special, but entertaining. The main character is cool. She really carried the book. I didn’t even mind the first person narrative in this. The writing itself wasn’t great. On the one hand there was an easy flow, but there was also a lot of repetition, and I don’t know if it was the writing or the narrator who gave the whole book a slightly hysterical tone. I didn’t like the narrator. She wasn’t the worst, but her characters all sounded the same and everything felt very rushed. She kept reading in the exact same tone throughout the whole book and it was exhausting to listen to. I really like the protagonist, but I don’t know if I could deal with any more of the novels. I might try to read one instead of listening to the audiobook. I haven’t decided if I think it’s worth it.

Entertaining gumshoe

Fun and entertaining. Kind of predictable but it's like that in some of these kind of books

Edge of my seat

I really enjoyed this. It had me on the edge of my seat all the way through. Loved Ericksen's performance as always. She's one of my favorite narrators. This is the first of Paretsky's books I've gotten to and it won't be the last. I just wish audible had them all.

Love V.I. Warshawski

What did you love best about Indemnity Only?

I have read all the Sara Paretsky V.I. Warshawski books. I am going through the series again a combination of reading and audiobooks. I love the lead, she is a rich character and could be my friend. This series is a little hard to listen to as to the richness of the story. Don't multi-task. Just listen and enjoy. I found myself going back in the narration because I was lightly listening and got lost (this is where listening/reading via Whispersync helped.)

Have you listened to any of Susan Ericksen’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Susan Ericksen is one of my favorite narrators. It's pretty much guaranteed that I will enjoy the book if she is narrating.

Loved the book, too bad about the narrator

How could the performance have been better?

Hard to believe that the narrator makes a living this way. Her voice lacks expression and it was only the fact that I enjoy the V I Warshawski books that I stuck with it. Windy City Blues had an extremely better narrator in Jean Smart

Great Story. Enjoyable Walk Down Memory Lane.

This story was very enjoyable to listen to. It was quite original to me since I’ve never read books with this story line before. The narrator does an awesome job with her characterizations, putting just the right amount of intonations, inflections, etc. to each portion of the book. I enjoyed learning about another side to insurance than I had previously known.

However, what I most enjoyed about this book was my walk through my own memories of the early 1970’s when cellphones, fax machines, printers, and computers were not available to the general public and corded landline phones were the main source of communications. People still relied on answering services. Women were mostly relegated to secretarial work and being housewives and men controlled much of the businesses. This is a history lesson as well as a great murder mystery and I highly recommend it. #murder #mystery #detective #fraud #GreatNarration #Narration #VIWarshawski #PI #Historical #SaraParetsky #SusanEricksen