All month long, Chicago had been hit by storms that put as much as three inches of water on the ground in an hour, but left the air as thick and heavy as a wet parka. Tonight’s storm was one of the worst of the summer.

I’d come up empty at all the likely spots: bus stops, coffee shops, even the sleaziest nightclubs that might not have carded a bunch of tweens. I was about to give up when I saw lights flashing in the cemetery to my right. I pulled over and rolled down my window. Above the rumble of rain on my rooftop I could hear high-pitched chatter and bursts of nervous laughter…

In a perfect play on Twilight-obsessed teens, Breakdown opens with a rain-soaked graveyard and a group of underage girls, daring each other to meet a ‘real’ vampire. When private investigator V.I. Warshawki arrives to retrieve one of the girls as a favour to a cousin, she discovers a dead man in a nearby tomb, staked through the chest, Buffy style.

The ever likeable Warshawski, private investigator, breakthrough female character and ‘great leg-woman,’ has a new case, and this time it’s going to get personal, with her own cousin being dragged into a complex tale of illegal immigrants, race hate and right wing media spin doctors.

It’s heady stuff, but this shouldn’t surprise Paretsky’s fans: she has always had a keen awareness of social issues and a strong political bent. In order to help address issues affecting female crime writers, she founded the American chapter of Sisters In Crime, and such real life engagement is palpable in her fiction. This is perhaps more evident in Breakdown than any of her other novels, as she delves into war crimes and the plight of the disenfranchised, the poor, and vilification of immigrants. At times this is a difficult balance, and some readers might find it frustrating, but for those who like their crime enriched by social critique this latest Paretsky thriller is one that should not be missed.