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Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead (Claire DeWitt mysteries #1)

by Sara Gran (Goodreads Author)

3.69 of 5 stars 3.69 · rating details · 1,483 ratings · 408 reviews

Sara Gran has written a novel about an unprecedented private investigator named Claire DeWitt. Destiny, it seems, has chosen Claire to be a detective, planting a copy of the enigmatic book Détection in her path as a teenager. Claire has grabbed this destiny with both hands but fate has been cruel. Twenty years later detection is her religion and Détection is her Bible.

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Hardcover, 273 pages

Published June 2nd 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (first published 2011)

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Community Reviews

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Dec 31, 2012 Anthony Vacca rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Anthony by: Carol

Ok, I might as well admit it: I have a new literary crush and her name is Claire DeWitt.

I mean, come on, how much cooler can you get? Claire is the world’s greatest living private detective (a title she is very much sure of) in a knowing Agatha Christie/ Sherlock Holmes kind-of-way, but she also goes through enough booze and drugs to make a James Crumley character’s heart throb. She also knows how to handle a gun and is not afraid to use it. I paraphrase here, but she has a line in the book alon...more

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Oct 14, 2012 Andrew Neal rated it 5 of 5 stars

I'm sure there are people who would tell you that this book is about a grown up girl detective who uses drugs and esoteric techniques to solve the mysteries no one else wants solved, but I'd say it's about the way people, places, and events are connected in surprising and often absurd ways.

There was a wonderful balance between the protagonist's depression and the background presence of humanistic compassion, which never strayed anywhere near the realm of preachiness. There was also a perfect bal...more

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Aug 16, 2011 Shomeret rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery-thriller, my-reviews

This is the most sympathetic mentally unstable detective that I've encountered since Bo Bradley, the bi-polar child protective services worker created by Abigail Padgett. Bo Bradley would go off her medication in order to access the flashes of intuitive insight she needed to solve her cases. Unfortunately, this would make some of her actions and decisions erratic, and she would get into trouble with her superiors. Claire DeWitt isn't on prescription medication but she does use certain uncontroll...more

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Feb 28, 2013 Sara Juno rated it 3 of 5 stars

I think this is a very interesting book but for some reason I didn't find it very engaging. The primary character, Claire de Witt, is great and her thoughts, actions and dialogue are insightful, funny and wonderfully politically incorrect. I want to know more about her so even though I didn't love this book, I plan to read the next novel in this series when it comes out. I enjoyed New Orleans as the setting. I enjoyed the quirkyness of Claire de Witt's detective methodology based on obscure meta...more

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Jan 06, 2013 Ed Eleazer rated it 4 of 5 stars

I have read several mystery novels over the past few weeks, and this is by far the best. It's major strengths are as follows: (1) the sense of place and its atmosphere are drawn flawlessly. The street scenes, the descriptions of the Katrina rescue efforts are so well depicted that I had a nightmare set in New Orleans the night I completed my reading. (2) Ms. Gran's style is perfectly suited to the subject matter. Her sentences are tightly constructed, almost Hemingway-esque, and each word seems...more

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Nov 19, 2012 Matt Schiariti rated it 2 of 5 stars

I loved Come Closer and Dope...as such I was pretty excited to read the latest from Sara Gran expecting something smart, witty, dark and fun to read...I was pretty disappointed...

Clair DeWitt...'the World's Greatest Detective'....is tasked with a case of finding out about the death of a New Orleans district attorney by his nephew. This happened post-Katrina so naturally that makes things complex from the beginning; a city and its people devastated, nobody trustful of anybody from the outside...W...more I loved Come Closer and Dope...as such I was pretty excited to read the latest from Sara Gran expecting something smart, witty, dark and fun to read...I was pretty disappointed...

Clair DeWitt...'the World's Greatest Detective'....is tasked with a case of finding out about the death of a New Orleans district attorney by his nephew. This happened post-Katrina so naturally that makes things complex from the beginning; a city and its people devastated, nobody trustful of anybody from the outside...Was he killed? Drown during Katrina? What happened to him?

I'm wondering what makes Clair DeWitt 'the world's greatest detective'. Apparently for her it was a calling, not a choice. Clair, graduate from a mental hospital, high school drop out, avid drug and alcohol user and master of sarcasm and treating other people like dirt learned the trade from her deceased mentor who in turn learned from a book, Detecion' written by 'France's greatest detective' in the 70s. Passages from this life altering book crop out constantly throughout the book...they read more like philosophical mumbo jumbo than anything else. The fact that the book just keeps turning up in the darnedest places (a book that's said to be pretty rare by the way) makes on scratch one's head.

Clair closes in on what really happened to the subject of the mystery as the story progresses through judicious usage of pot, booze and embalming fluid laced joints that are all the rage amongst the gangs and homeless in the area.

As I write this I find myself comparing Clair DeWitt to Gregory House from the television show. Great at the job, complete and utter train wreck in personal life and awful with just about everyone they run into. Problem is, she's like house times a hundred. I found myself not really liking her at all. Her detecting methods seem to be some combination of mystical mojo and intuition I couldn't quite figure out, usually emphasized by much use of controlled substances and in her lucid moments, she pretty much browbeats everyone she encounters with sarcasm.

The mystery itself? It was ok. I didn't find much real suspense and as with some of her previous work I didn't think 'wow, I just HAVE to find out what happens next!', because I knew with every page turn there would be more Clair DeWitt and more mumbo jumbo from her Detective's Bible.

I don't mind damaged characters, in fact I find them the most interesting to read but they should at least have something likable about them and I really couldn't find much to like about Clair DeWitt. The inside jacket of the book said that this is the beginning of a new series. Will I give the next one a shot? I think so, clearly because I know Sara Gran can write something I can really enjoy, and who knows? Maybe the more we learn about her and the events that make her so damaged the more interesting she'll become.

So I'll consider this one a stumble out of the gate and hope we see some more detecting in the next one and maybe a little less revelation via acid trip. (less)

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Oct 02, 2012 Kevin rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm not typically in the habit of picking up mysteries (says the guy who has Sherlock Holmes in his currently-reading list) but I heard that this one was set in New Orleans so I decided to give it a go. By page four I said, "I GET IT ALREADY IT IS SET IN NEW ORLEANS."

okay so it turns out that was an overreaction but at the time I felt like Gran was trying to find every way possible to say, "They are on a FAMOUS STREET in NEW ORLEANS and now they are visiting a FAMOUS BAR in NEW ORLEANS and now s...more I'm not typically in the habit of picking up mysteries (says the guy who has Sherlock Holmes in his currently-reading list) but I heard that this one was set in New Orleans so I decided to give it a go. By page four I said, "I GET IT ALREADY IT IS SET IN NEW ORLEANS."

okay so it turns out that was an overreaction but at the time I felt like Gran was trying to find every way possible to say, "They are on a FAMOUS STREET in NEW ORLEANS and now they are visiting a FAMOUS BAR in NEW ORLEANS and now she's ordering a VERY NEW ORLEANS KIND OF DRINK, THE ONE YOU WOULD ORDER AT THAT VERY BAR if you are DOWN WITH NEW ORLEANS" and I was feeling battered by it all.

It turns out that I was feeling that way because I had expected this to be a straightforward no-nonsense mystery novel, the dull cookie-cutter kind that I've tried a few times before and I wish I could tell you who either the authors or the characters were but I've forgotten already because they were dull "oh shit I'm in an airport and I forgot to bring a book oh well I'll borrow this whatever th- oh we're on the ground? great. bye." kind of material, and in those books this INTENSE NEW ORLEANS SCENE SETTING would have come across as overwrought.

It also turns out that this is not the typical cookie-cutter forgettable detective mystery novel, and the intensity of the scenes started to make sense after a few more chapters because the book plunged with determination into the weird, or at least as weird as a book that is set in the "real world" can be without phasing into a China Mieville novel or something.

By the end I still found there to be an overabundance of reminders that THIS IS NEW ORLEANS though I took comfort in the reminders being a type that was tailored for locals, or people in love with the city-outside-tourism. Bourbon St. was mentioned but only in reference to one of the residential blocks. Beads appeared only in a dream sequence. Incidents took place in the forgotten parks and parking lots of the city, meals were consumed in local holes-in-the-wall, and overall it was obvious that Gran herself has to have spent a good deal of time here to catch and nail down this esoteric ambiance for which she was reaching. On occasion it came across as pandering to locals, a bit of a nudge in the ribs like, "you see? See? We both know the REAL New Orleans, not the tourist New Orleans," almost as if she'd taken notes every single time she saw something specific to the city and then felt pressed to include every single tidbit.

But ... for the most part she did it right, so I'm not complaining. (except here I inject my personal nitpick: it's "Krewe du Vieux" not "Krewe De Vieux".) This is a strange place to live, or it can be if you want to embrace the weird, and this novel was definitely an extension of that idea - parsed through a detective murder mystery and with all the action and strangeness compressed into a tight novel, but still. Not bad. It's no subtle love song to the city like A Confederacy of Dunces but it's obvious it comes from a good place.

I initially objected to all the Hurricane Katrina references (the story being set just a few months after) as borderline disaster tourism but eventually came to realize Gran just had a lot to say about the intersections of broken people and broken places. I still think the story could easily have transpired without the storm - New Orleans can be made dark and dangerous enough with any timeline - but I've shelved my original objections.

What's it boil down to? A few hours' entertainment, a book devoured in one night because I hadn't read anything like that in a while and it really caught my interest. I liked it, I enjoyed reading it, I'm happy to give it four stars.(less)

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Aug 13, 2012 Joyce rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A review I read by Bruce DeSilva of AP said, "Suppose Nancy Drew had been raised by indifferent parents on the mean streets of Brooklyn, liked getting stoned, got seduced by the occult and was haunted by her failure to solve the childhood disappearance of a close friend. She might have grown up to be a lot like Claire DeWitt, self-proclaimed world's greatest detective."

He was right on target. I read this, and kept reading, not sure what I thought about it. The story takes place in New Orleans a...more

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Jul 15, 2012 Adam rated it 5 of 5 stars

Holy crap is this book good. I don't really even have the words for it.
It is worthy entrant into the Canon on mystery novels (such as it is.)

I have read so many god-damned books where the author is declared to be a worthy successor to
chandler or hammett, and with the exception of robert b. parker at his pinnacle, or robert crais, at his pinnacle,
I have always been disapointed.*

And this book wasn't even advertised as the worthy successor to hammett. But oh my is it ever.

The novel is so very...more

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Jun 21, 2012 Ej rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Laura Lipmann "Reminds me why I fell in love with the genre" blurb on the cover sold this book to me.

Lipmann is right. Gran's book is a great reminder of what makes Noir so irresistible.
Gran's Claire DeWitt is a rough-around-the-edges lone wolf detective trying to make her living solving mysteries a la the wisdom of her deceased mentor Constance and Jacques Sillete, a cult French detective and author of a mysteriously ubiquitous book, Detection. DeWitt's detection style draws on a combinati...more

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Feb 11, 2012 Ashland Mystery Oregon rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery-us-louisiana

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead was a wondrous book, and DeWitt a wonderful character. Sara Gran is now on my must read list.

Here's what Alafair Burke says: "With Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, Sara Gran has pulled the traditional female sleuth into the twenty-first century with a novel that's smart and hip, dark and funny."

Claire DeWitt began detecting as a youth, but Nancy Drew she's not. She's a follower of Jacques Silette, the author of Detection and she's honed her skills th...more

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Feb 05, 2012 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: crimepieces

Sometimes you come to a book with absolutely no expectations whatsoever. I picked up City of the Dead by Sara Gran in a second-hand book stall and it sat on a shelf for a couple of weeks. It crept up to the top of my reading pile because I fancied something by an American author, as my recent reading has been skewed towards Scandinavian crime fiction. After reading the first chapter it was clear I’d stumbled upon something good.

The plot involves private investigator Claire DeWitt who has been ca...more Sometimes you come to a book with absolutely no expectations whatsoever. I picked up City of the Dead by Sara Gran in a second-hand book stall and it sat on a shelf for a couple of weeks. It crept up to the top of my reading pile because I fancied something by an American author, as my recent reading has been skewed towards Scandinavian crime fiction. After reading the first chapter it was clear I’d stumbled upon something good.

The plot involves private investigator Claire DeWitt who has been called in to investigate the disappearance of New Orleans Assistant District Attorney, Vic Willing. He disappeared when Hurricane Katrina hit the city and his nephew initially thinks that he died in the storm. But witnesses emerge who remember seeing Willing in the aftermath of the hurricane and Claire is hired to find out the truth.

The plot isn’t unique in subject matter as plenty of crime fiction involves the hunt for the missing. What makes this book stand out is the creation of the character of Claire DeWitt and the juxtaposition between the slightly kooky characterisation and the bleak realities of New Orleans life. Claire lived in New Orleans years ago and trained under the famous detective Constance Darling. After Constance was shot in a restaurant hold-up, Claire became in her words “the best detective in the world”. The back-story to Claire is well-developed. She was part of a gang of three girls who tattooed their entwined initials onto their wrists. However one night one of the three girls, Tracy, disappears, presumably one of the city’s ‘lost’. Fragments of Claire’s dreams about Tracy intersperse the book and are written in a lovely ethereal style.

Claire DeWitt has the touch of the Sherlock Holmes about her. She uses disguises, picks through possessions for seemingly meaningless clues and uses drugs for both recreation and to free her mind to investigate the case. She is a devotee of Jacque Silette’s Détection, a fictional detection manual which she dips into and quotes with evangelical fervour. But unlike Holmes, there is a delusional/odd-ball feel to her character. Her disguise fails to camouflage, her drug taking ends only with catatonia and a brush with death. But the case is resolved and Gran writes strongly about the violence that Katrina leaves in its wake. New Orleans is portrayed as a city inured to death and where murder is only casually investigated, if at all.

It’s great to pick up a book and discover a world of delights. City of the Dead is obviously the first book in a series, with so much of Claire de Witt’s life remaining unresolved at the end. Hopefully the next in the series will be equally strong.
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Nov 28, 2011 Terina rated it 2 of 5 stars

I waited a few days to review thinking my opinion would change. It didn't. The concept is interesting - a mystical private investigator who is the best in the world and has her own personal unsolved mystery. I just couldn't get past all the coincidences that weren't explained by the resolution. She happened to be in NY on 9/11 so she could answer someone's question about it. She happened to pick up a dirty business card. She happened to be in the right neighborhood, turn the right corner. I also...more

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Oct 07, 2011 Marlyn rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: arc, mystery

Claire DeWitt is a brilliant private detective, trained by Constance Darling who instilled in her the tenets of Jacques Silette's book Détection. Claire's techniques are unusual: she relies a great deal on intuition, dreams and drug-fueled visions for answers to her questions. Though her methods may be unorthodox, she is very successful, and as a result, very expensive.

Having been unable to locate his uncle, D.A. Vic Willing in post-Katrina New Orleans, Leon Salvatore hires Claire some 18 months...more

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Oct 06, 2011 Sarah Jordan rated it 3 of 5 stars

This story is a starkly original and unique twist on the private detective novel. Claire is every bit the hard-boiled PI, professional, brutally honest, and like a bloodhound on the scent. When the story begins Claire has accepted her first case since recovering from a breakdown, and this case brings her back to New Orleans about a year after Hurricane Katrina. She is hired by the hapless nephew of a wealthy, missing lawyer named Vic Willing (according to Jacques Silette's book Detection, we all...more This story is a starkly original and unique twist on the private detective novel. Claire is every bit the hard-boiled PI, professional, brutally honest, and like a bloodhound on the scent. When the story begins Claire has accepted her first case since recovering from a breakdown, and this case brings her back to New Orleans about a year after Hurricane Katrina. She is hired by the hapless nephew of a wealthy, missing lawyer named Vic Willing (according to Jacques Silette's book Detection, we all choose our roles in life, so his name is doubly appropriate).

There are frequent quotes from the Detection book, and they are obtuse and fortune-cookie like, in that they seem to be wise but really say nothing, such as "The clue that can be named is not the eternal clue" and "Not one detective in a thousand will hear my words, and of those, not one in one hundred will understand. It is for them who I write." Much of the book Detection is impossible to understand, but it also makes readers like Claire want to be that rare one who "gets it", to be part of an exclusive club of enigmatic WTFery. And Claire has been obsessed with the book since she was a teenager. Of all the drugs she uses and abuses, the book Detection is Claire's most dangerous addiction because it won't allow her to live her own life. She sees signs everywhere that seem to lead her back to the book, and the reader is torn between believing that Claire's life is one of mystical portents and omens, or just really messed up from her desperation, unhappiness and heavy drug use.

Claire is very hard to like, but easy to feel compassion for. She seems to be lost and unhappy, friendless and disconnected to others. Reading this book is like peeling petals off a rose - every layer removed changes the appearance of the rose and gives a better view of what is at the core. And so it is with Claire, as her investigation leads her to some of the damaged, broken, unwanted teenagers living on the streets of New Orleans. Claire knows them because she is one herself. As one character says, she was born sad.

I had trouble finishing the book, because it was pretty depressing. In spite of a clear, narrative voice and a solid mystery, Claire's world was not one I wanted to spend time in. The strong sense of place was not helping, because the author would constantly write about how horribly corrupt, dangerous, and hopeless New Orleans was, both from Katrina's aftermath and its own infrastructure and politics. I'm glad I read it through to the end, but the mystery of Claire's path in life, and her connection to Detection, did not leave me curious enough to wade through the gritty and depressing world of Claire DeWitt again.
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Sep 16, 2011 Ann rated it 4 of 5 stars

I had pretty much gone off mysteries because the protagonists mostly just irritate me. Claire DeWitt is different though. I can't call her likeable, but she is different. One reviewer called her "a cross between Nancy Drew and Sid Vicious" - that sounds about right. Girl detective with a potty mouth, who drinks too much and takes whatever drugs are offered. That makes the story sound flip and superficial, and it is anything but. The post-Katrina world of young, poor, African Americans is well-dr...more

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Sep 03, 2011 Lucinda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2011) introduces Claire DeWitt, the self-declared world’s foremost private investigator. Claire moved to New Orleans to work for Constance Darling, who taught her five-coin I Ching interpretation, the esoteric art of reading fingerprints, and the French detective Jacques Stillete’s esoteric method of detection. After Constance was killed, Claire left New Orleans, returning reluctantly post-Katrina to search for Vic Willing, a well...more

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Aug 31, 2011 Jennifer rated it 5 of 5 stars

This was a fast read. What do people even mean by that? Do they mean it had only a few pages? Short chapters? Easy contents? That is was suspenseful? That they stayed up too late reading it, and read it off and on the next day until it was done? I stayed up too late reading it, and wound up reading it off and on all day until I got to the end. That's what I mean this time by "a fast read."

Claire DeWitt has a lot of depth, even if she is pretty obnoxious. She's not all that obnoxious, though; she...more

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Aug 29, 2011 Amanda rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery

Reading a tough girl heroine who didn't feel the need to broadcast her sassiness to anyone who would listen was really refreshing. I could go into a mini-rant about the "bad-ass heroine" - I loves me a girl who knows her own mind, but the tendency for some genres (urban fantasy seems to me to be the biggest culprit) to only be able to create a strong female lead by fashioning an obnoxious, overly-sarcastic character who would honestly never be able to make a friend is tiresome. Wow, that was a l...more

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Aug 26, 2011 Jaylia3 rated it 5 of 5 stars

No one really wants their mysteries solved. That’s what Claire DeWitt, the world’s greatest private investigator, believes. Instead, solving mysteries is a quest or an almost holy compulsion towards the truth for the true detective. The clients already know the resolution, but they don’t want to. They hire a detective to prove that that their mystery cannot be solved.

Claire DeWitt is a jambalaya-like mixture of a character. A hard-headed, soft-hearted, rapier tongued, self-proclaimed crazy woman...more

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Aug 26, 2011 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars

I. LOVED. THIS. BOOK. Really probably a 4.5 star book, but Good Reads is annoying, so I chose to round up.

Here's what I didn't really love about the book. Claire Dewitt herself was not really an original character. Tough girl detective - already been done. The ending - well, yeah, it was a tad disappointing. At the same time, I'm pretty sure it was intentional on the author's part, considering the theme of the book. (My third dislike was entirely a personal one – living in Knoxville and living...more

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Aug 02, 2011 K. Bird rated it 5 of 5 stars

Claire Dewitt is a Private Investigator. She also does drugs, routinely lies, callously uses people who obviously care for her, and is obsessed with the great, French detective Jacques Silette.

Called to New Orleans on a straight forward missing persons case (post Katrina) we follow Claire into a maze of coincidences and characters who are caught up in the melancholy dance of fate.

Claire's mentor lived and died in New Orleans, and what Claire uncovers isn't so much the answer to a murder, but the...more

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Jun 13, 2011 James Thane rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the most inventive and unconventional crime novel I've read in years--a meditation on the nature of mystery as much as it is a "mystery" novel.

Claire Dewitt is a student of the famous French detective Jacques Silette, has been mentored by one of Silette's protoges, and is now herself the world's greatest detective. Picture Nancy Drew by way of Hunter S. Thompson.

After an absence of ten years, Claire is called back to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, to solve the disappearanc...more

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Jun 06, 2011 Tony rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: loanable, novels

If you like your crime fiction, or heck, just your regular fiction, a little offbeat and dark -- this is well worth trying. The titular Claire is the world's foremost private detective and we meet her in 2007 New Orleans at the start of a new case. The nephew of a much-liked prosecutor has hired her to find out what happened to his uncle, who went missing during the post-Katrina flooding. The case is a bit of an uneasy homecoming for Claire -- she used to live in New Orleans, but left following...more If you like your crime fiction, or heck, just your regular fiction, a little offbeat and dark -- this is well worth trying. The titular Claire is the world's foremost private detective and we meet her in 2007 New Orleans at the start of a new case. The nephew of a much-liked prosecutor has hired her to find out what happened to his uncle, who went missing during the post-Katrina flooding. The case is a bit of an uneasy homecoming for Claire -- she used to live in New Orleans, but left following the murder of her mentor several years ago.

Claire is a compelling, but very damaged protagonist, and definitely not your typical fictional detective. Just to give a sense of her, there's a brief throwaway line in the first third of of the book in which she mentions off-handedly that she's shot four people, killed two -- "none in self-defense." No further explanation given (nor necessary). She's also a devotee of the mysterious French detective Silette and his enigmatic treatise "Detection". She uses the I-Ching, takes whatever narcotics are at hand, follows hunches based on dreams, lies, cheats, steals, and is generally unstable.

The book tacks back and forth between Claire's investigation and glimpses into her messy past. Unlike most conventional crime stories, it's hard to tell what's relevant to the investigation and what isn't. There's a fair amount of time spent detailing her girlhood friendship with two other girls in New York, and the mysterious disappearance of one of them when they were teenagers some twenty years ago -- and you'll have to read to the end to learn if this have anything to do with the main plotline. Missing people are a recurring theme in the book, and creates a core of sorrow to the story.

The book also has a lot to say and show about post-Katrina New Orleans. Both the city and Claire are suffering from what might be considered post-traumatic stress disorder, and the pain of this contrasts with the deadpan prose and dialogue. The author lived through the floods, and the book doesn't shirk from grim and heartrending descriptions of what happened during and after the flooding. It's not a happy book, but it is one well worth reading by anyone with an interest in New Orleans, or if you like interesting female protagonists.(less)

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Jun 06, 2011 Readersentertainment rated it 5 of 5 stars

Claire DeWitt is said to be the best private detective out there, which is how she comes to find herself striving to unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of Assistant District Attorney Vic Willing in post-Katrina New Orleans. Hired for the investigation by Willing's nephew, Leon, who has recently come into possession of his uncle's great fortune and now wants answers, DeWitt is far from your average private detective. She is impetuous, but inherently brilliant and naturally disposed to i...more Claire DeWitt is said to be the best private detective out there, which is how she comes to find herself striving to unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of Assistant District Attorney Vic Willing in post-Katrina New Orleans. Hired for the investigation by Willing's nephew, Leon, who has recently come into possession of his uncle's great fortune and now wants answers, DeWitt is far from your average private detective. She is impetuous, but inherently brilliant and naturally disposed to investigative work. She is a Sherlock Holmes for the modern age (and in female form, of course), and her idiosyncratic reliance upon instinct, her dreams, the I-Ching, and various herbal substances adds great dimension to this dynamic, well-crafted character. DeWitt is a storm in her own way, destructive and altogether fascinating to watch as she haphazardly wanders through a city known for both its wild night-life and its risks. But this is New Orleans 18 months after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and it is still a very sad picture. Struggle is around every corner, and much remains to be understood. For example, Claire's job is to find out where Willing was after Katrina struck. Since Willing was the only ADA who was not corrupt in the city, perhaps the chaos following the storm provided the perfect opportunity for someone to exact revenge. At least, that seems like a rational conclusion...
...This is only the beginning. Follow Claire through storm ravaged New Orleans as she works to solve the case of Vic Willing's disappearance in the novel Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, the latest release from novelist Sara Gran.
Gran, who has traveled extensively throughout the United States, takes inspiration from her experiences in different locations of interest. New Orleans is definitely one of those places. Like Claire, she is originally from Brooklyn, but she provides us with a clear and honest picture of New Orleans after the major storm. It is a depressing and captivating account, the perfect basis for this suspenseful and fascinating modern mystery.
If you really enjoy contemporary-style mystery fiction and suspense, then look for Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran. The novel will not disappoint. Also, for those readers who are fans of books set in New Orleans, this novel has been described by readers as a powerful and accurate account of post-Katrina New Orleans, and you should consider reading it worth your time. (less)

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Oct 11, 2012 Zora rated it 5 of 5 stars

I think this novel might just be a work of genius.

Is the protagonist/narrator a hard-boiled PI with some mystical abilities, Chandler doused in Taoism? Or is she a schizophrenic, self-medicated with street drugs, who has invented half of what she tells us? I don't know…and I like that I don't know.

Claire DeWitt moves through the underworld of New Orleans, just after Katrina, to find a missing ADA. She uses, in her detection, old frienemies, new acquaintances, street people, Mardi Gras "Indians,"...more I think this novel might just be a work of genius.

Is the protagonist/narrator a hard-boiled PI with some mystical abilities, Chandler doused in Taoism? Or is she a schizophrenic, self-medicated with street drugs, who has invented half of what she tells us? I don't know…and I like that I don't know.

Claire DeWitt moves through the underworld of New Orleans, just after Katrina, to find a missing ADA. She uses, in her detection, old frienemies, new acquaintances, street people, Mardi Gras "Indians," her dreams, and most crucially, the book "Detection," a mystical French tome that is more philosophy than how-to, known by the rare few meant to know it. It says that the answers to any mysteries are all around you this moment; you only need to look and see them correctly, and that no one wants the answers to the mysteries, really. The excerpts from "Detection" read something like Taoists texts such as the I Ching (which is referenced here, too, but not the real I Ching I've read various translations of, but some odd version Gran has, I assume, invented for her own reasons). And they apply not only to the case, but to everything about Claire, in convoluted and clever ways.

Those philosophies end up calling into question (along with Claire's descriptions of her craziness, half-admitted, half-denied) how much of the narrative is real. Is there really such a book as "Detection" at all? Is Claire's childhood friend missing or actually dead (and Claire knows it, saw it, or perhaps even did it?) Not a page goes by where there aren't two possible readings of a fictional event, and this is where the cleverness of the book lies. Claire clearly is an unreliable narrator…but exactly how unreliable is she?

The prose is rock solid, lucid stuff, the dialog terrific and the secondary characters interestingly flawed. Gran is a good observer of people. So even if you take it at the surface level of the hard-boiled PI novel, it's a good read, offering a rich and nuanced background for the mystery and page-turning prose…but there's so much more to it than that (and I think some reviewers here missed those other levels). The novel itself becomes a sort of koan, calling into question reality, sanity, good and evil.

You know what my reaction reminded me of?--the first time I saw _Being John Malkovich_, before the sexism in it began to trouble me, when I thought, I think I'm in the presence of a true creative innovator here who is taking not into this world at all, into some odd parallel version of this world whose unreality illuminates my own reality. What I understood here--and I get the sense I didn't "get" everything Gran offers--was impressive.

Highly recommended.
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Dec 25, 2011 Jennifer rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: George W. Bush

Recommended to Jennifer by: the Waukegan Library

Shelves: read-2011

Imagine throwing the following into a blender--the grittiness of a George Pelacanos novel, the heartbreak of Season 4 of The Wire, the strange melancholy and mysticism of early James Lee Burke. and perhaps a smattering of Spike Lee's documentary When the Levees Broke. If your blender is really, really good, you might end up with a novel like this one by Sara Gran. In it, private investigator, Claire DeWitt, returns to New Orleans post-Katrina to take on a missing persons case. However, as Clair...more

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Oct 30, 2011 Kandice rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-read-in-2011, mystery

I've seen reviews of this book that say it's a quick read. If you think so too, then you've missed some of the layers of this book (and there are many layers). It is a book within a book. It is several mysteries within another mystery. It is a detective story and a philosophical examination of life. It is reality and dreamtime. It is love and hate, growth and deterioration. And if you think about it at all, it stays with you quite awhile after you’re done reading it.

It’s also a detective story w...more

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Aug 04, 2011 Tammy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Once every now and then, I stumble upon an author who not only writes beautiful stories but also does so with humanity. Sara Gran is my favorite find this year. I first read Come Closer and gave it 5 stars. More literary than horror but still spooky and chilling. I couldn't really articulate why I was so crazy about the book or why I was so taken with Ms. Gran.

I am now 2/3 through City of the Dead and have figured it out. Her novels are unusual, a bit bizarre, with intriguing characters. Just wh...more

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Jul 11, 2011 Zen Nana rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Post-Katrina New Orleans provides the hot soup Private Investigator Claire DeWitt dives into to try to solve the disappearance of a District Attorney during "the storm." Not a pretty milieu, no glitz or glamour, unless you consider gangs, homeless, and a city still lying in ruins a decade after a devastating hurricane glamourous. Claire slips right into the mystery in her old hometown and the drinking, pot-smoking, tattooed PI consults the I Ching and a strange old book to help her along the way...more

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“It doesn't matter what people want to hear. It doesn't matter if people like you. It doesn't matter if the whole world thinks you're crazy. It doesn't matter whose heart you break. What matters is the truth.” — 8 people liked it

“Never be afraid to learn from the ether...That's where knowledge lives before someone hunts it, kills it, and mounts it in a book.” — 3 people liked it

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