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

by Sara Gran

The client already knows the solution to his mystery. But he doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t hire a detective to solve his mystery. He hires a detective to prove that his mystery can’t be solved.

“When a person disappears,” Silette wrote in Détection, “the detective must look at what she took with her when she left—not only the material items, but what is gone without her; what she carries with her to the underworld; what words will go unspoken; what no longer exists if she is made to disappear.”

Clues are the most misunderstood part of detection. Novice detectives think it’s about finding clues. But detective work is about recognizing clues. Clues are everywhere. But only some can see.

Some people, I saw, had drowned right away. And some people were drowning in slow motion, drowning a little bit at a time, and would be drowning for years. And some people, like Mick, had always been drowning. They just hadn’t known what to call it until now.

“Sometimes you have to accept things that you can’t understand, Claire,” she said. I frowned. So did Constance. “Well, I suppose you don’t have to accept them,” Constance clarified. “But they exist all the same.”

“In this book,” I went on, as if we both weren’t crying, “this guy, he says, ‘Be grateful for every scar life inflicts on you.’ He says, ‘Where we’re unhurt is where we are false. Where we’re wounded and healed is where our real self gets to show itself.’ That’s where you get to show who you are.”

I realized he was terrified. He thought I was going to kill him. Like a lot of people who thought about suicide, Andray didn’t actually want to die. Dying was the hard part. He just wanted to be dead already.