claire dewitt and the city of the dead review

It’s not unlike her to interview someone and then slip into their bathroom and steal their pain medication, doping up on expired Vicodin and Valium. DeWitt delves into the seedier aspects of these marvelous cities while simultaneously trying to numb herself to the associated emotional trauma of old relationships. Gran’s series possesses a Philip Marlowe quality with both location and character-her first book took place in New Orleans, while the second is set in San Francisco. In this particular case, DeWitt’s ex-boyfriend, still very dear to her, has been killed, and she intuitively knows it’s not the botched breaking and entering suspected by the police. The Kali Yuga is actually a fairly complex philosophical idea (don’t worry, she explains everything quite clearly). In “Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway,” she’s solving the Case of the Kali Yuga. DeWitt is first introduced in Gran’s 2011 “Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead” in which she solves the Case of the Green Parrot. In Silette’s world, clues come in unexpected places-dreams, tattoos, fingerprints-not those found on a glass or a gun, but the actual whorls and arches of the finger’s print. As teenagers, Claire and two friends found a life-changing book by French detective Jacques Silette, “Détection,” and started practicing his peculiar methods.

Miserable, drug-abusing, pill-popping, possibly insane-she’s nevertheless one of the greatest private eyes in the world.

“Reminds me why I fell in love with the genre.Sara Gran has created an amazing character in Claire DeWitt, the detective in her brilliant series.

“Reminds me why I fell in love with the genre.”-Laura Lippman “The hard-living, wisecracking titular detective bounces around post-Katrina New Orleans trying to track down a missing prosecutor in this auspicious debut of a new mystery series-and the Big Easy is every bit her equal in sass and flavor.”- Elle When a respected DA goes missing she returns to the hurricane-ravaged city to find out why. Claire also has deep roots in New Orleans, where she was mentored by Silette’s student the brilliant Constance Darling-until Darling was murdered. A one-time teen detective in Brooklyn, she is a follower of the esoteric French detective Jacques Silette, whose mysterious handbook Détection inspired Claire’s unusual practices. This knock-out start to a bracingly original new series features Claire DeWitt, the world’s greatest PI-at least, that's what she calls herself. DeWitt’s mesmerizing character and memorable voice take your breath away.”- New Orleans Times-Picayune “What would you get if that punkish dragon girl Lisbeth Salander met up with Jim Sallis’s Lew Griffin walking the back streets of New Orleans? Or Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone transformed herself into a tattooed magnolia driving a 4x4? Clare DeWitt, that’s what you’d get. as if David Lynch directed a Raymond Chandler novel.”-CNN

Claire dewitt and the city of the dead review