You do not need to have read the first entry in the series to appreciate Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway, but if you’re like me and you sort of fall in love with Claire, you need to know some things about her to fully understand the swirl of desperation that consumes her. She’s conflicted, confused, the perfect guide through a ruined world of puzzles. Claire DeWitt is a detective, sure, but she’s also into drugs and Chinese medicine and mysticism. I typically like my crime novels gritty, less about detection and more about character Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead manages to appease us all: the series-wanters, the character-seekers, and mystery-hounds. In addition to reinvigorating the idea of what a series could be, Gran also discarded the mold of the private detective novel, shaping her clay into something new. If it wasn’t Hoke Moseley, I wasn’t sure I wanted anything to do with it. I won’t say I’d written off all series, but I’d certainly soured on some (even ones I’d once found appealing) and on the concept as a whole. I came to that book expecting good things because I liked all of Sara Gran’s previous work ( Dope, Come Closer, Saturn’s Return to New York), but - as someone who had grown tired of crime writers being pushed to create a series character - I was also ambivalent. WE FIRST MET PRIVATE detective Claire DeWitt in 2011’s Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead.
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