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businesses and governments. Both Herbst and Brody show the power that secrets and lies can
grant as well. For Herbst, the power of the lie is destructive. Rope of Gold shows how Mrs.
Winter s three daughters lie to cover up their actions and plans for capitalist gain they know will
not win their mother s support or approval. Here, lies allow a monetary and socially orientated
value system to replace Mrs. Winter s work-related value system, showing that the secrecy of
lies can be profoundly powerful. Brody, in turn, offers a more positive look at lying. Molly and
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Bill witness union plots guarded with secrecy and lies to keep the management and the police
from interfering. Lies told to the oppressor are powerful tools that the weak can use to try and
marshal their strengths in secrecy. Lies allow those who previously did not have power to take
that power without fear of mainstream authority figures stopping them. Women proletarian
writers of the 1930s were aware of the destructive and potentially nurturing power that lies could
provide for the oppressed working classes.
Lying is a precarious activity for feminist hard-boiled detectives. They must balance the
demands of the role of detective with their ties to those who are traditionally seen as the Other
and deviant by mainstream society. Lying, and the consequence of a powerlessness it could
embody for the feminist hard-boiled detective, threatens to reduce them to a position of
helplessness and link them with the criminal. Feminist hard-boiled detectives must endeavor to
lie in productive ways that will aid their cases and allow them to move freely without
mainstream authority agencies trying to limit their power, much in the same manner that Brody
shows lies used productively by proletarians.
Paretsky s Warshawski has a background as a public defender and is aware of the power
given to interpretation by society and, more specifically, by the justice system. While talking to
her lawyer, Freeman, in Hard Time, Warshawski is forced to defend the truth of her statements
about her automobile accident and the death of escaped convict Nicola Aguinaldo. While
Freeman questions her about Aguinaldo and the accident, Warshawski tells him: I am telling
the unvarnished truth about Nicola Aguinaldo. Not a court room truth (66). These two
sentences show that Warshawski has a very definite view of what passes for truth in courts of
law. She, outside the court and in a conversation with her lawyer, is able to tell the truth
completely. In the courtroom, her truth would be slanted and censored. The final product of the
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courtroom is a selective partial truth. Warshawski s understanding of what the offices of
mainstream society will allow to be heard harkens back to a similar awareness about mainstream
society by women proletarian writers. Women proletariat writers knew that the more
mainstream society controlled the presentation of information, the less likely it was that
alternative viewpoints would be presented in a complete and contextual light. Herbst s Victoria
knew this in Rope of Gold, which is why she began writing about the struggles in Cuba.
Warshawski is not naïve. She knows that anything and anyone can lie. Even her much
valued database, LifeStory, can be manipulated to give Murray Ryerson a radically different
version of the same background check Warshawski ran a scant couple of days before (269).
Faced with a world where lies live on every level of society, Warshawski also engages in
transgression to help her get the job done. On basic levels, Warshawski employs lies to keep
people from discovering the real reason why she is searching for suspects. This way she can be
assured that the people she is tracking are not aware of the reasons she is following them. In
Blood Shot, she pretends to be a lawyer looking to award a financial settlement for an old
automobile accident to track down potential witnesses, Joey Pankowski and Steve Ferraro
(Paretsky 59). Warshawski s agency remains intact in this instance because of the fact that she
manages to make progress in the case without alerting anyone to her intentions, and she is not
misleading anyone in authority.
On a grander level of deception, after Warshawski is arrested in Hard Time, she arranges
to lie about her location. She instructs Freeman not to tell people where she is, rather to let them
think she has made bail and is merely lying low while she investigates potential criminal
activity in Coolis, a women s correctional facility (363). This lie allows Warshawski once again
to further her investigation without alerting those she is investigating to her actions and goals. In
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contrast to the previous example, Warshawski is lying to authorities, but she is using another
authority figure to perform the deed. Freeman s repetition of Warshawski s lie gives it an air of
authority that would otherwise be missing from her declaration. This ploy keeps Warshawski in
power and reflects the secrecy proletarian writers and activists used to keep strike activities
secret until the last moment.
Warshawski s greatest risk comes from lying directly to mainstream authority figures like
the police. In Deadlock, Warshawski lies to misdirect old family friend, Lieutenant Robert
Bobby Mallory. When Mallory asks Warshawski what her fingerprints were doing in the
office of murder victim, Clayton Phillips, she chooses lies to distract him from his line of
questioning:
What were you doing down there? [Mallory asks]
I put Phillips s body in the hold Sunday morning and I wanted to see
people s faces when it came out on the conveyor belt [Warshawski replies] &
What did you want to see Bledsoe for?
& My suitcase fell into the middle of a ship, I wanted to know if they
recovered it & my Smith & Wesson was in that case. That cost me three hundred
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Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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