I began wanting to create a detective who really turned the tables on that image of women, to know that you could have a sex life and not be a bad person. You could have a sex life and still solve your own problems. It was eight years from when I started having the fantasy that I was going to create such a detective to when I actually sat down and came up with V. I. Warshawski. It was a long, slow journey to come to a writing voice and do that character.

Reviewers said Ghost Country was rich, astonishing and affecting in the way it blended comedy, magic, and a gritty urban realism in a breathtaking ride along Chicago's mean streets.

Organizer is kind of a grand term for what I was doing.

I always wrote; my first story was published in the magazine The American Girl when I was 11

Live disasters are wonderful attractions when you're safe on the other side of them.

If you're born lucky, you don't have to be good.

I had wanted to write Ghost Country for a long time, but it wouldn't work.