claire dewitt and the city of the dead by sara gran

The initial investigation of Willing shows him as a very public, political persona, a stereotypical 'great guy,' but provides very few details about his personal life. His nephew, who is the sole heir to his estate, is feeling guilty about accepting his inheritance without knowing what happened to his uncle. Vic Willing was a successful New Orleans District Attorney, who, apparently, made it through Katrina but then disappeared without a trace. This is not unusual in the New Orleans that Claire knows. The murderers were just kids and they were never brought to justice. This is a very cold case.Ĭlaire had not been back to New Orleans since the woman who was her mentor, the previous greatest detective in the world, had been shot to death along with several other people in a French Quarter restaurant. It is early 2007, eighteen months after the storm. She is contacted by a man from New Orleans who wants to hire her to look into the disappearance of his uncle after Katrina. Detection is her religion and Detection, the book, is her bible.Īs we meet Claire, she is barely recovered from a nervous breakdown caused by extensive fasting and drug use. Her primary investigative tools are dreams, drugs, the I Ching, and a dog-eared book that she found in a dumbwaiter in her parent's crumbling mansion in Brooklyn when she was a teenager called Detection by a writer named Jacque Silette. She is, to put it mildly, an extremely unorthodox investigator. I'm really glad I did.Ĭlaire DeWitt is a private investigator - the world's greatest, in her own words - from California, out of Brooklyn by way of New Orleans and many other stops along the way.

I had to get the first book, which turned out to be Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead.

The reviewer's description of the detective and of the plot grabbed my attention and I knew I had to have that book.īut since I am an OCD kind of reader, I certainly could not start with the second book in a series. I was listening to Fresh Air on NPR recently when their book reviewer started talking about Gran's latest book, her second in a series featuring a detective named Claire DeWitt. I had that experience earlier this year with Kate Atkinson.

It's always such an unexpected pleasure to meet a writer previously unknown to you who is simpatico, someone whose style you really like and appreciate. Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran

Claire dewitt and the city of the dead by sara gran