The man who claims to be John Thayer turns out to be Andrew McGraw, the father of Anita Hill and a big labor union leader.

In the same week, the real John Thayer is also killed, which alerts her on to scams and connections between the Knifegrinders labor union, the Ajax Insurance Company, and the Fort Dearborn Trust.

Peter's younger sister, Jill Thayer, supplies family information and private documentation in her deceased father's office that support V.I.

[7] Her feminist style may also have also been influenced by her youthful “frustration with traditional gender roles, voiced in her novels by different characters, but most consistently espoused by Lieutenant Bobby Mallory".

[7] "Sara Paretsky, author of a series of mystery novels featuring detective V.I Warshawski, is known for bringing a feminist perspective to the hard-boiled Private Eye genre.

Ann Wilson describes Warshawski as follows: "The primary appeal is readily evident; a heroine modeled on a hard-boiled detective is a woman who is self-reliant and independent, a prototype of a feminist ideal."

Publishers Weekly called Indemnity Only "the start of a very promising new mystery series," while Chicago Magazine compared Paretsky's integration of character and environment to past masters of the genre Dashiell Hammett and Chandler.