What's In a Name? A Guest Post by Sara Paretsky

RHYS BOWEN:  When Hank asked me if I had room for a post by Sara Paretsky the answer was 

DUH! Who wouldn't make room for the fabulous one? She's been my idol for years, not only for her ground-breaking PI series but also for founding Sisters in Crime and giving us female authors a voice and a presence in what was a male-dominated world. 

So I'm really excited Sara has a new book out and I know you are too. Welcome, Sara:

SARA PARETSKY:

 

It’s not so easy to name a book. If you’re writing domestic fiction, you don’t want to call your novel, Blood Spatter. If you’re writing noirishly, Murder at the Homesick Restaurant misses the mark.

I called my first book, Indemnity Only. I was working in the insurance industry at the time and the plot centered on Workers’ Compensation fraud. In workers comp, “indemnity only” means the worker died on the job and the insurance company pays out a death claim (after suitably fighting with the bereaved family over whether the worker caused her/his/their own death through carelessness and therefore the employer and the insurer aren’t liable – but that’s another novel altogether. In fact, my tenth, Total Recall.)

Deadlock seemed perfect for my second novel, where a Great Lakes freighter is blown up in the Sault Ste. Marie locks.

After that, my editors felt my market presence, fledgling though it was, was marked by two-word titles, preferably with a double meaning. Sometimes I have the title before I even write the first sentence, but often I name my baby long after the final draft is with my editor.

Overboard, my new novel, was originally called Double Dirty.  One of my friends used to drive trucks for a Mob-connected firm when he was in high school. He loved hanging out with the guys, and one of the things the guys did was play a roving crap game underneath Chicago’s bridges. It’s not straight out of Guys and Dolls; Guys and Dolls is straight out of the street life of the American city.

These roving games go back almost two centuries. It’s kind of quaint that in the age of the Net, you can still find action underneath the Chicago Avenue bridge if you know when to look for it.

Around 1900, when immigration into American cities was at its peak, old hands liked to fleece newbies using loaded dice. They called the fixed game “the double dirty.” I thought it was perfect for Overboard, which deals with the way modern corporations put in the fix, so that the ordinary person is always playing against megacorps who use loaded dice.

Unfortunately, a title check turned up 10 books already named Double Dirty. These were all extremely raunchy porn. One even involved horses, at least as far as I could tell from the cover art. On the one hand, I could have grown my market in new directions. On the other, I would have spent months fielding angry letters from readers: I bought your Double Dirty and it had no instances of..…  Well, you fill in the blanks. In the fashion of today’s angry letter writer, many paragraphs of insults would follow, attacking me for not knowing what I was talking about when I wrote the novel.

Overboard sounds genteel, almost Austen-like in contrast. It refers to the overly emotional state many of the characters exhibit and, very literally, to the multiple dunkings characters have in the foul waters of the Chicago river. No horses are involved.

What are some of your favorite book titles? And why?

Short Bio

Sara's first book, INDEMNITY ONLY, was published in 1982. A perennial bestseller, she was named 2011 Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America and is the winner of numerous awards, including the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement from the British Crime Writers' Association and the CWA Gold Dagger. Not only has Paretsky's work broken barriers, she has also helped open doors for other women. In 1986 she created Sisters in Crime, a worldwide organization to support women crime writers, which earned her Ms. Magazine’s 1987 Woman of the Year award. She has received the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from several different universities. Sara has also done a great deal of work with and for organizations that advocate for those on society’s margins, and in addition to her novels, Sara has written numerous short stories and three works of nonfiction. OVERBOARD is the 22nd in Sara's beloved V.I. Warshawski series.

Links

Website: https://saraparetsky.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaraParetsky

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saraparetsky/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saraparetsky

OVERBOARD

Legendary detective V.I. Warshawski uncovers a nefarious conspiracy preying on Chicago's weak and vulnerable, in this thrilling novel from New York Times bestseller Sara Paretsky.

On her way home from an all-night surveillance job, V.I. Warshawski is led by her dogs on a mad chase that ends when they discover a badly injured teen hiding in the rocks along Lake Michigan. The girl only regains consciousness long enough to utter one enigmatic word. V.I. helps bring her to a hospital, but not long after, she vanishes before anyone can discover her identity. As V.I. attempts to find her, the detective uncovers an ugly consortium of Chicago powerbrokers and mobsters who are prepared to kill the girl. And now V.I.’s own life is in jeopardy as well.

Told against the backdrop of a city emerging from its pandemic lockdown, Overboard lays bare the dark secrets and corruption buried in Chicago’s neighborhoods in masterly fashion.