A Sunday Times Thriller of the Month

'[Bad Company ] depicts a professional woman's third act, in which leaving one's own terms is quite clearly the holy grail... Paretsky impressively wraps all of that (and more) in a spy thriller' The Irish Times

' [a] superbly angry novel... Magnificent'. Natasha Cooper, Literary Review

'Bad Company postively bristles with [Paretsky's] specialities' Financial Times

The CIA forced Lily to retire before she was ready. She'd spent forty years as a field agent. She'd been skilled, resourceful, dedicated – everything that makes a good agent, but she'd rubbed too many of her bosses the wrong way. They jumped on a botched op as an excuse to fire her. Now in her seventies, waiting in a doctor's office, she reads a magazine article that startles her out of retirement.

The story casts doubt on everything she believed about her first – and happiest – posting in Hayalistan, one of the old Soviet republics. Lily's angry, and she decides to find out what really happened when she was stationed there. As word of her investigation gets back to the CIA, the Company knows they must silence her. But Lily's aging body can't perform the feats it managed in her forties and fifties, and escaping their attempts on her life will test her physical and mental skills at a whole new level.



Sara Paretsky is a critically acclaimed crime writer whose works have been awarded the CWA Diamond Dagger and won the CWA Gold Dagger; she is a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America. She founded Sisters in Crime, an international organisation that advocates for women in the mystery/thriller field, and she continues to campaign for social justice and women's rights. She lives in Chicago.