Title:	Dead Land
	Author:	Sara Paretsky
	Published:	April 21, 2020, William Morrow
	No. of Pages:	416
	Cover Price:	$28.99 Hardcover, $14.99 Kindle

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Not a die-hard fan of Sara Paretsky’s famous character, V.I. Warshawski (although Washawski is a good character that I have enjoyed reading about previously), I found that Dead Land was hard to get into and I quickly lost interest in the story. That is not to say that the writing isn’t good – actually Paretsky is an excellent writer. This one, however, just didn’t do it for me, and I found it very difficult to finish, and, in fact, abandoned my intentions and put the book down early on.

The premise of the story involves the fact that unscrupulous politicians use their power to develop land that shouldn’t be developed according their greedy desires, with no thought to what the consequences are. The novel exposes what is actually happening in America today as far as political gain and power. Land use, is one of those subjects that doesn’t interest many of us.

Even though Paretsky, a celebrated best-selling author, writes thriller books that keep readers on the edges of their seat, the subject matter of this one was disappointing and actually quite boring. The characters were well-developed, as in her previous novels, but the storyline just didn’t grab as in her previous novels. In fact, it was an exercise in perseverance to continue reading as far as I did. I don’t doubt that if I had kept reading, things would have turned around and the book would have become compelling. However, there are so many really fascinating books out there by excellent authors, I didn’t want to waste my time.

Paretsky die-hard fans will want to pick this one up; those of us who aren’t will want to skip it.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.