Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead (Claire DeWitt Novels) - Hardcover

Gran, Sara

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0547428499 ISBN 13: 9780547428499

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011

Synopsis

Claire DeWitt is not your average private investigator. She has brilliant deductive skills and is an ace at discovering evidence. But Claire also uses her dreams, omens, and mind-expanding herbs to help her solve mysteries, and relies on Détection — the only book published by the late, great, and mysterious French detective Jacques Silette. 

The tattooed, pot-smoking Claire has just arrived in post-Katrina New Orleans, the city she’s avoided since her mentor, Silette’s student Constance Darling, was murdered there. Claire is investigating the disappearance of Vic Willing, a prosecutor known for winning convictions in a homicide- plagued city. Has an angry criminal enacted revenge on Vic? Or did he use the storm as a means to disappear? Claire follows the clues, finding old friends and making new enemies — foremost among them Andray Fairview, a young gang member who just might hold the key to the mystery. 

Littered with memories of Claire’s years as a girl detective in 1980s Brooklyn, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead is a knockout start to a bracingly original new series.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Follow the clues. Believe nothing. Question everything.

 

“I love this book! Absolutely love it. This is the first fresh literary voice I’ve heard in years. Sara Gran recombines all the elements of good, solid storytelling and lifts something original from a well-loved form.”—Sue Grafton

 

“Not your mother’s girl detective, Claire DeWitt is a cool blend of Nancy Drew and Sid Vicious. Sara Gran has pulled the traditional female sleuth into the twenty-first century with a novel that’s smart and hip, dark and funny. I can’t wait for the next one.”—Alafair Burke, author of Long Gone

 

“This is deeply intelligent fiction that cuts deep and captures a city’s soul. Claire DeWitt’s power will sneak up on you.”—Attica Locke, author of Black Water Rising

 

“This is not just a mystery novel but also a novel about mysteries; Claire DeWitt is a detective less by choice than by calling. Sara Gran has written something truly splendid and unique, and if we’re all very lucky, there will be more.”

—Craig Clevenger, author of The Contortionist’s Handbook

From the Inside Flap:

Claire DeWitt is the world’s greatest PI, a one-time teen detective in Brooklyn and follower of the enigmatic French detective Jacques Silette, whose mysterious handbook Détection has led Claire to use the I-Ching, omens, prophetic dreams, and mind-expanding drugs.

        Claire also has deep roots in New Orleans, where she was mentored by the brilliant Constance Darling—until Darling was murdered. When a respected New Orleans DA goes missing during Hurricane Katrina, she returns to her newly wrecked former city to find out why. The clues lead her to Andray Fairview, a young man who had nothing to lose before the storm and has less now. Finding old friends and making new enemies, Claire solves the case, but she’s haunted by others gone missing: her best friend and partner in detection, who disappeared from a New York City subway station in 1986, and Jacques Silette’s daughter, Belle, stolen from a hotel room and never heard from again.

        Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead is a knockout start to a bracingly original new series.

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0547428499
• ISBN 13: 9780547428499
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288