Sara Paretsky’s New Thriller Stars a Retired CIA Agent. Can You Start With Bad Company?

Yes. Bad Company is a standalone spy thriller, so you can start here even if you’ve never read a Sara Paretsky novel. Its lead is Lily Sedako, a former CIA field agent in her seventies who’s living in Chicago when an anonymous package pulls her back into a case she thought was behind her. Minotaur Books publishes the U.S. hardcover on November 10, 2026.

Who is Lily Sedako?

Lily spent much of her CIA career in Central Asia, including a posting in Hayalistan, a fictional country Paretsky gave its own history, language and epic poem. Lily had close ties to people in its mountain communities. Then a coup removed the country’s elected president, and the life she’d built there came apart. More than two decades later, a copy of The New Yorker arrives anonymously with a photograph Lily has never seen. She’s in it, and the story asks readers to draw conclusions about what she did in Hayalistan.

That setup gives Lily two questions to answer. Who wants to expose her now? And how much of what she remembers about her time in Hayalistan can she still trust? The people she once worked for have their own reasons to keep her from finding out.

How does Bad Company differ from the V.I. Warshawski mysteries?

Chicago is home base for both women. For V.I. Warshawski, it’s also where she works as a private investigator. In Indemnity Only, her first case on the page begins with an assignment to find a missing young woman and leads to a murder. Lily’s investigation begins with evidence that implicates her and takes her back into the world of intelligence work.

That changes what’s at stake when each woman follows a lead. V.I. has to figure out who lied to her about a case she took on. Lily has to reconsider a story she’s lived with for decades, including the choices she made while working for the CIA. Her old contacts and field experience give her ways to investigate, even as the agency has reason to watch what she does with them.

Lily’s age also gives the premise some bite. Retirement makes it easy for people to assume her working life is over, while the photograph makes clear how much her old work still matters. Paretsky has said she wanted Lily to challenge assumptions about what older women can do. For readers drawn to the institutional loyalties and betrayals in spy fiction, that makes Lily an especially interesting person to follow.

Which Sara Paretsky book should you read first?

• Start with Bad Company if you want a self-contained espionage thriller about a retired agent investigating her own past.
• Start with Indemnity Only if you want a Chicago private-eye mystery and the first book in the V.I. Warshawski series.

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Preorder the U.S. hardcover of Bad Company on Amazon or find the mass-market paperback of Indemnity Only on Amazon.

If the secrets and divided loyalties are what draw you to spy fiction, read our review of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.

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