Interesting article on Paretsky, Obama, and US race relations

Browsing the 'net today, I came across a very interesting article in The Independent (published overnight NZT) about influential modern-day US crime writer Sarah Paretsky, President Barack Obama, and race relations in America.

Written by Arifa Akbar, the article, entitled "Crimes of a century: Sara Paretsky on fiction, power and the open case of race in America" contains a number of interesting issues and insights, including Paretsky's thoughts on Obama (who is from the same suburb), and Martin Luther King Jr, her history of railing against racism, how she has incorporated important issues such as ongoing racial prejudice, and Chicago corruption into her detective novels, and how her iconic detective was spawned from anger at the stereotypical women in (hardboiled) detective fiction.

You can read the entire article (highly recommended) here.