It's just not fair to run across someone so talented in multiple arenas. The author of this book, Barbara Fister, just happens to be a librarian I admire greatly for her passionate participation in discussions about libraries, about fostering collaboration between librarians and other disciplinary faculty, about how to best teach college students and much more. And now I discover she writes really good stories as well. I'm sure the comparisons between her work and that of Sara Paretsky abound: they both have a former cop, now private investigator as the protagonist, both are set in Chicago and convey realistically the good and the bad of that city, both tackle thorny social issues. In the Wind is sort of a cold case mystery, since the woman that Anni Koskinen is trying to help is accused of murdering an FBI agent 30 years ago. There's a lot going on in this story--white supremacists, former members of the American Indian Movement, the socially disenfranchised under our very noses. But at its core, this is about the current incursions on our civil liberties that are reminiscent of earlier and equally bad episodes in our history when Americans were spied upon and persecuted, largely because their beliefs and behaviors weren't convenient for the Executive powers.
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