This book looks at Paretsky's work within the context of the current debate over the political possibilities and subversive potential of detective fiction. It commences with a proposal of two new frameworks for assessing the subversive possibilities of detective fiction: trauma literature and historiographical discourse. A discussion of detective fiction as a literature of trauma enables a perspective on the politics of agency within detective fiction. The book examines the gender politics of Paretsky's fiction in relation to Paretsky's own background and political activism and within the context of the political agendas and debates over identity politics within second and third wave feminism. It looks at the way Paretsky constructs her social landscape, one of changing neighbourhoods, and of the tensions and power struggles that threaten to fracture those neighbourhoods along lines of class, race, and ethnicity. The book also looks at the unexplored references to particular incidents of corporate malfeasance and political corruption in Paretsky's fiction, incidents that received considerable press coverage at the time Paretsky was working on her novels. An awareness of these references and resonances brings Paretsky's political agenda into clearer focus. It looks at Paretsky's detective novels in relation to historiography and identity politics. Paretsky's achievements are not limited to the area of gender politics, and her work clearly warrants more than the passing references and general treatment it has received. Paretsky's work invites a reconceptualisation of detective fiction as both a literature of trauma and as historiographical narrative.