Sara Paretsky is an American author best known for her detective novels featuring the female private investigator V.I. Warshawski. She is credited with pioneering the genre of female-led detective fiction and has been referred to as 'one of the most important crime novelists in the world'. Paretsky has written over 20 novels, including the V.I. Warshawski series, which has been adapted into a feature film starring Kathleen Turner.