Clair DeWitt and the City of the Dead
Sara Gran, 2011
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780547428499
Summary
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. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 2, 1971
• Where—Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Tufts University
• Currently—lives in Northern California
Sara Gran is the author of the novels Dope, Come Closer, Saturn's Return to New York, and the Claire DeWitt detective series (2011). Her work has been published in over a dozen countries in nearly fifteen languages.
Born in Brooklyn in 1971, Ms. Gran lived in Brooklyn until 2004. Since then she has traveled widely and lived throughout the US including Miami and New Orleans. She now resides in the state of California.
Before making a living as a writer, Ms. Gran had many jobs, primarily with books, working at Manhattan bookstores like Shakespeare & Co, The Strand, and Housing Works, and selling used & rare books on her own. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[T]he exotic person of Claire DeWitt [is] a supremely confident detective who reads the clues she finds in dreams, the I Ching and scraps of garbage that float up from the street. ... Claire prowls the darkest corners of [New Orleans], eyes wide open to the suffering and despair of its shell-shocked residents. Claire is a charmer, but there’s nothing cute about her paranormal visions of a city living in torment.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times
(Starred review.) As brash and bold as Sherlock Holmes himself, Claire DeWitt arrives in still-chaotic New Orleans 18 months after Katrina. She's been hired to investigate the disappearance of Vic Willing, a local prosecutor, who's not been heard from since the hurricane. Claire surprises the local gangtsa set with her unique bravado. One of them, Andray, is compelled to help her tap into the darkness of Katrina's aftermath. From there, Claire finds her answers. Mentored and deeply inspired by a famous French detective, the I Ching, and profoundly illuminating dreams, a complex Claire leads us into her own nightmares as well. Verdict: This is not to be missed—Claire is a moody, hip, and meticulous investigator. Gran (Dope; Come Closer) builds an addictive sense of anticipation with a fantastical frame. Alternately gritty and dreamy, this would appeal to those who liked Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist and readers of Charlie Huston (e.g., The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death). Highly recommended.
Library Journal
If there isn’t yet a subgenre called funky noir, this wacky PI novel could be a fragrant first...lots of fun.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Clair DeWitt and the City of the Dead:
1. How would you describe Claire DeWitt? Do you find her endearing...or frustrating and irritating? What kind of emotional baggage does she carry around with her?
2. Talk about Claire's unorthodox detection methods—her use of dreams, omens and the I-Ching? How does drug use, according to Claire, enhance her investigatory powers? Talk about some of the clues Claire uncovers—the business card, for one. Could you follow her reasoning or intuitions? Did they make sense to you?
3. Silette's Detection claims that detective work has more to do with introspection into the detective's own life than with standard investigatory procedures. Is that true? How does the statement relate to Claire DeWitt? How does her investigation into Vic Willing's disappearance become an investigation into her own psyche?
4. More from Stilette's Detection: "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." How is this passage from Detection relevant to the mystery at hand? Are there other passages in Detection that struck you?
5. Are Claire's frequent references to Detection—and its philosophical commentary—illuminating? Or are they distracting and overly digressive?
6. What did you make of Claire's relationship with Andray and Terrell? Like Claire, were you suspicious of Andray as the possible murderer?
7. New Orleans might be considered a character in its own right. Why would Gran have decided to use the city, post-Katrina, as a setting for her mystery? In what way is the city significant—thematically and atmospherically—as a backdrop for the story? What have you learned about New Orleans that you were previously unaware of?
8. Were you able to follow the novel's structure as it jumped back and forth from Claire's past to the present? At what point did the various elements begin to pull together for you?
9. Is the clue that ultimately breaks the case plausible? Or does it require too large a leap in logic to be credible?
10. Overall, what are your impressions of Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead? Is it a compelling read? A despressing one? Does it deliver as a suspenseful, engaging murder mystery? Or did it fail to get off the ground for you? Will you be following new books as they appear in the series?
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