Something may be happening here, but you won’t know what it is… Imagine the squeaky clean Nancy Drew all grown up and adult and totally alive, complete with raging hormones and all sorts of nasty habits, turned professional investigator - and relying on a lot more than good girl pluck, kiddie pulp coincidence, a wealthy daddy and her Wonder Bread chums to crack a case.Ĭlaire does occasionally rely on assistance from her two best friends from childhood, Tracy and Kelly, but she’s just as likely to use dreams, omens, her troubled past, I-Ching readings, assorted substances (controlled and otherwise) and the teachings of a legendary book, Detecion, written by enigmatic French detective/philosopher, Jacques Silete, to get the job done.Īnd it’s that anything-and-everything approach, the woozy literary equivalent of a mid-sixties-era Bob Dylan song, that makes this book such a hoot.

Twentyish private eye CLAIRE DeWITT is, well, different. Anyone expecting author Sara Gunn to simply milk the noir vein she tapped so well in her classic Dope has another think coming. We’re not in Chandlertown anymore.īut we certainly passed through there on our way here. 'Reminds me why I fell in love with the genre.Uh-oh.

'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 When a respected DA goes missing she returns to the hurricane-ravaged city to find out why. Claire also has deep roots in New Orleans, where she was mentored by Silette's student the brilliant Constance Darling-until Darling was murdered. 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.

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. DeWitt's mesmerizing character and memorable voice take your breath away.'- New Orleans Times-Picayune '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. as if David Lynch directed a Raymond Chandler novel.'-CNN

Claire dewitt