Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead

DNF at 39%—too woo woo for me, so much that the mystery, the prose and the page turner-y short chapters still failed to compel me to continue. Reading low star reviews hints at a problematic ending that I can do without. I thought I'd have liked it more.

Skillful. Troubling. But I've never liked urban fantasy much

Claire DeWitt has to be one of the oddest detectives ever. She is kind of spooky, she has no fear, she gets inspiration from dreams and I Ching, she drinks too much, and she does drugs. Additionally, she seems to be in a perpetual state of existential crisis, with events of her past dogging her ceaselessly.
Such a person should be a total wreck, no? But au contraire, she is “the best detective in the world”.
Claire DeWitt returns to New Orleans, a city where she has a lot of history, to investigate the disappearance of a DA attorney who went missing during Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans is still a broken city. It and its citizens have not yet recovered from the trauma. Her investigation takes her deep into the NO gang culture. She knows it is dangerous, but she cannot help but go where her detective sense takes her. She has adventures, some of them internal, on the fringes of society as she follows her unconventional path to the truth.
An odd-ball story, but I liked it.
3.5 stars rounded up.

★ ★ ★ 1/2 (rounded up)
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader as part of a quick takes post to catch up–emphasizing pithiness, not thoroughness.
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I have copious notes on this one, and I just can't decide how to talk about it. So...I'll cheat and do this.

It's like someone decided to do a serious take on Dirk Gently and his approach to detection. And it is pretty serious—although it has moments where I wasn't sure if I was supposed to laugh or not. A former teen detective turned “world's best detective” comes to post-Katrina New Orleans to hunt for a missing D.A. Following the idiosyncratic methods of her mentors (in both print and in real life), DeWitt deals with the good, the bad, and the hard-to-fathom that make up New Orleans. She also deals with some ghosts from her past as she uncovers the truth about the DA (including many things he'd probably want no one to uncover).

It's a book about literary private eyes as much as it is a literary private eye story. I do recommend it, you're not likely to read anything like it. I'm coming back for the sequel soon.

Not that there was a great danger of this, but between this book and Treme there is zero chance I'll ever live in New Orleans.

This is a hard boiled detective novel mixed with some mysticism. Like all hard boiled detectives, there is a whole lot of humanity that all lose. People disappoint you, but you get why they disappoint you, so you still care. Since this is a more modern hard boiled detective, she doesn't drink alcohol, but does drugs. There is violence, drugs, and a whole lot of pain in this story.
She is cynical, persistent, and moral, like all hard-boiled detectives. She's also convinced of her own greatness and importance. That doesn't work as well here as it does with the best of the hard boiled detectives. Maybe that's why I like the old time radio programs. They are only about 30 minutes long!
The mysticism helps Clair find her clues, so that is a different spin on the hard boiled detective trope. I don't hate Jacque Sillette, but sometimes it seems forced.
The part that really made me take stars away is the racism that Clair doesn't think she has. I think she puts on black face to disguise herself once. She prays in an Native American language, I think. She didn't use that word, so maybe she really did mean from India. I'm not sure, but either way it felt a little too much like a white savior mixed with a little cultural appropriation.
However I will probably read the next one.

I want to be Claire DeWitt but I also am okay with my life right now.

Claire DeWitt is such an intriguing character. Flawed, broken, and fragile but tough, creative, and smart at the same time. This mystery novel was so different than many I've had read. The existential/absurdist view and slightly mystical tone made the story even more unique. I will definitely be following this series.

This was fascinatingly different from any other mystery that I've read. It's both more real and almost mystical, which fits the setting of post-Katrina New Orleans. The characters are gritty, especially compared to the detectives in the “cozy” mysteries I typically plow through, but well constructed and nicely flawed. All in all, a good book by literary and mystery standards.