Name: Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead
ISBN: 9780547428499

Sara Gran

Augmenting her brilliant deductive skills with dream analysis, marijuana and the written work of a mysterious French detective, private investigator Claire DeWitt reluctantly returns to post-Katrina New Orleans to solve the disappearance of an unpopular prosecutor whose fate may be known by a young gang member. By the author of Dope. 25,000 first printing.

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead

Jane McCullough

Sheila

This book is aggressively unique, fresh, occasionally frustrating, and a revealing walk-through of life in New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina. With every description of homes without roofs and detritus on the streets you can feel Gran looking right at you asking "Where were you?" 

Claire DeWitt is probably the most stoned detective I've ever known, but that doesn't take away from the fact that she really is the best.

P.S. screw the person who wrote in pen on the pages of this library book!! who does that?!

Melody Izard

Claire DeWitt is trying to come to terms with her troubled past and tripping over the stink of Post Katrina New Orleans. She's a private detective because she has to be. It's the book damn it. Détection by Jacques Silette turns up everywhere. Drawing her into the stagnant mosquito water. She knows Vic Willing was up to something - the clues keep showing her the way. 

I love this series and am ready for the third one.

Sans

Scott, thank you for recommending this to me! It's not a book I'd have picked up on my own and I wouldn't have known what I was missing.

Claire was by turns funny and a bit despicable, a lot like Sherlock Holmes, even down to how she could tell one kid had worked at an ice cream parlor a year ago. The plot did not go the direction I thought it would and, for some reason, I couldn't see the end coming either. 

The audiobook was actually really well done. I usually don't like listening to books (my attention wanders and I don't like the way the narrators read the book/do the voices/name your complaint here) but the narrator here was perfect. She sounded just like a hard-living PI should sound.

Solid 4 stars and the sequel is on my list to pick up from the library next time I head in.

Nicholas Zachariou

Lisa

Rosie Yakob 

Jeff James

“Delicious and addictive.”—Salon.com “Reads . . . as if David Lynch directed a Raymond Chandler novel.”—CNN “What would you get if that punkish dragon girl Lisbeth Salander met up with Jim Sallis’s Lew Griffin walking the back streets of New Orleans? Or Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone transformed herself into a tattooed magnolia driving a 4x4? Clare DeWitt, that’s what you’d get . . . DeWitt’s mesmerizing character and memorable voice take your breath away.”—New Orleans Times-Picayune This knock-out start to a bracingly original new series features Claire DeWitt, the world’s greatest PI—at least, that's what she calls herself. A one-time teen detective in Brooklyn, she is a follower of the esoteric French detective Jacques Silette, whose mysterious handbook Détection inspired Claire’s unusual practices. Claire also has deep roots in New Orleans, where she was mentored by Silette’s student the brilliant Constance Darling—until Darling was murdered. When a respected DA goes missing she returns to the hurricane-ravaged city to find out why. “The hard-living, wisecracking titular detective bounces around post-Katrina New Orleans trying to track down a missing prosecutor in this auspicious debut of a new mystery series—and the Big Easy is every bit her equal in sass and flavor.”—Elle “Reminds me why I fell in love with the genre.”—Laura Lippman "I love this book!" -- Sue Grafton

Liz Prinz

jam 🍯

Stijn C

Kelly Gorman

Sarah Agterhuis

Angi Cox

Augmenting her brilliant deductive skills with dream analysis, marijuana, and the written work of a mysterious French detective, private investigator Claire DeWitt returns to New Orleans to solve the disappearance of a prosecutor.