Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on June 2, 2011

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead is very different from the other two Sara Gran novels I've read -- Come Closer and Dope -- but like those novels it is quirky and engaging. This novel is playful where the other two were serious. If you're looking for a straightforward detective story, keep looking: this isn't it. Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead resides somewhere between strange and bizarre. That's what I liked about it: I enjoyed its offbeat nature.

Claire DeWitt is the world's greatest private detective -- just ask her -- although her failure to find a friend who went missing when they were both teenagers has been a lifelong frustration. Claire is hired to find Vic Willing, a New Orleans prosecutor with some inherited wealth who disappeared after Katrina. He's been declared dead but his nephew wants Claire to find out what happened to him. Her first "clue" is a business card she finds on a restaurant floor that has no apparent connection to anything. This turns out to be consistent with Claire's unconventional detection methods, which include consulting the I Ching, divining personalities from fingerprints, and denting her rented truck so it will fit in with her surroundings. She rivals Sherlock Holmes in her deductive ability although she seems to pull clues from the ether as much as from close observation.

As Claire endeavors to solve the case, she gets involved with a drive-by shooting, wonders about people messing with electrical transformers atop utility poles who aren't wearing utility company uniforms, ponders the obscure advice about detecting proffered in a French tome on the subject, gets high (because drugs take you to places where you can find clues), is shot at (repeatedly), and reminisces about her mentor, Constance, who taught her most of what she knows about sleuthing while trying (unsuccessfully) to get Claire "to see something better in people, something that would lead us up a little higher."

Claire repeatedly says that we all have mysteries but we rarely want to solve them. Fear of the truth is one of the novel's themes. Clues are central to the novel but not in the usual sense. Clues in this novel aren't only the fruit of detection; they're the key to understanding life. We're told, for instance, that you can't change a person's life, you can only "leave clues ... and hope that they understand, and choose to follow."

The titular "city of the dead" is New Orleans -- a city in which it's "easy to die." Post-Katrina New Orleans plays a key role in the story. One of the characters says that there's "a lot to love" about New Orleans but "it ain't no place for happy endings." That's exactly how Gran portrays it. The novel takes a hard, honest look at the violence that endures in the spirited but tragic city. Gran realistically portrays what passes for a criminal justice system there: a dysfunctional alliance of police and prosecutors that was broken even before Katrina's devastation. Maybe the picture she paints of New Orleans is too bleak -- Gran hammers at the city's abysmal murder rate again and again, almost approaching literary overkill -- but I think the city deserves the spotlight she shines on it and I'm pleased to see the attention she focuses on a vibrant city that continues its struggle to recapture its glory. Gran clearly loves the city (a place where, Claire observes, "magic is real") and feels for the impoverished residents who were most affected by Katrina. There's a poignant moment in which a drug dealer talks about the anger that swelled within him in the aftermath of Katrina, anger that (as Claire points out) would be recognized as a symptom of PTSD under other circumstances or in a different place.

Claire does manage to solve the mystery of Willing's disappearance (she's the world's greatest detective, after all) although she fails to solve all the mysteries in her own life. The solution to the Willing mystery is a little sad, but remember: there are no happy endings in New Orleans. Within the context of this unconventional novel, it's nearly perfect.

I love the way the story is structured, I love the dialog, and I love the message. I hope Gran writes more Claire DeWitt novels.

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The Hanging Wood by Martin Edwards

Published by Poisoned Pen Press on April 5, 2011 

Orla Payne, seemingly a bit whacky (or at least a tad drunk) jumps into a silo in the apparent belief that it will help her solve a mystery. Her body is later found buried in grain. The day before she jumped, Orla begged Hannah Scarlett to investigate the disappearance of Orla's brother, Callum Hinds, twenty years earlier, when Orla was seven and Calum was fourteen. Scarlett works with the Cold Case Review Team at Cumbria Constabulary. Soon after Calum's disappearance (and the simultaneous disappearance of his uncle's pig), his uncle, Philip Hinds, hung himself in the Hanging Wood, an act widely viewed as an admission of responsibility for Calum's death. Although Philip was the last person who saw Calum, no evidence of Philip's role in Calum's disappearance was ever found. Scarlett tackles the mystery with the help of historian Daniel Kind. As the story progresses, another person dies and someone turns up who appears to have a long-lost connection to the Hinds family.

Martin Edwards sets up the usual range of diversionary suspects, giving Scarlett and one of her detectives a chance to muck around in the lives of the upper crust Lake District residents. Some of the people they interview repeat information provided by others; the redundancy tends to slow the narrative flow. In fact, much of the story is carried by exposition and dialog; in the absence of action or significant conflict, the pace lags. If the lives and relationships of the wealthy family members fail to generate much interest, neither does Scarlett's life, despite her continual fretting about her failed marriage and her critical assessment of the men who happen into her gaze. Again, the redundancy is irksome: how many times do we need to hear that the macho womanizing detective she's working with isn't her type, despite her admiration of his "powerful forearms"?

Perhaps readers who have read the previous Lake District novels will feel an attachment to the characters that I lacked and will have more interest in the mundane details of their faltering relationships. My interest lay not in the characters but in the story, which takes some interesting twists before arriving at a satisfying conclusion. Despite the uneven pace and lackluster characters, Edwards' capable prose style and plotting skills make The Hanging Wood a reasonably good yarn that dedicated mystery fans should enjoy.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

A Time Gone By by William Heffernan

Published by Simon & Schuster on August 1, 2003

New York City, 1945. A prominent judge is murdered in his home. Jake Downing and Jimmy Finn are the detectives assigned to the case. By the time they arrive at the murder scene, the police commissioner and Manny Troy are already there. Troy is "the boss of the city's Democrats." He makes sure that Downing and Finn provide round-the-clock protection for Cynthia, the judge's young widow, in addition to investigating the murder. Although Downing is married and about to have a baby, he becomes intimately involved with the woman he's supposed to be protecting.

New York City, 30 years later. Finn is retired and Downing, now chief of detectives, having laid his wife to rest, reopens the investigation of the judge's death. Downing has never wavered in his belief that an innocent man was executed for the crime.

The novel shifts between those two time frames, telling the story of the 1945 murder investigation and the story of its impact on Downing's life after three decades have passed. The story is also told from shifting points of view: sometimes as a third person narrative, sometimes in the first person from Downing's perspective. A couple of times the story is told in first person from Finn's perspective -- an odd choice that seems out of place, given that this is Downing's story, not Finn's.

A Time Gone By is a competent mystery that, unfortunately, seems too familiar. The scenes from 1945 attempt to develop a sense of noir that is overly reminiscent of a Bogart movie. The supporting characters are stereotypes: the Irish cop who speaks in a brogue; the beautiful young woman who is a hat check girl before she marries an older, powerful, abusive man; the corrupt politicians and nasty thugs. Only Downing is given a unique personality, and it isn't much of a personality. The investigation unfolds as the reader might expect, with few surprises at the end. The one twist that Heffernan provides in the last pages seems forced.

One last gripe: Downing tells the reader early on that the man who was executed for the judge's death didn't commit the crime but Heffernan beats the reader over the head with the claim that the guy deserved to die anyway ... for other unspecified crimes. That information is apparently intended to allow the reader to maintain sympathy for Downing, who is complicit in the wrongful execution, but it seemed to me to be an all-too-obvious device. If Downing let an innocent man die, after all, we shouldn't feel good about him; manipulating the reader's emotions by making us think the guy deserved his death just masks the impact of Downing's reprehensible actions. Heffernan engages in similar manipulation of the reader's feelings about Cynthia toward the novel's end. It was all just a little too contrived for me.

Having said all that, there are things I liked about A Time Gone By. Heffernan's prose fluid prose is often a pleasure to read. The story unfolds at a nice pace. The sense of place and of the post-war era is realistic. This isn't a bad novel at all, but it didn't grab me.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Final Notice by Joe Gores

Published by Random House in 1973

Reading a DKA novel is like spending a few days shadowing a repo man to learn the ropes of the repossession business, except that it's more fun (and less dangerous). In a DKA novel, you know that you'll meet interesting characters, encounter plenty of action, and exercise your brain as you try to solve whatever puzzle Joe Gores has in store for you.

Final Notice takes place six months after Dead Skip. In that novel, Bart Heslip was hospitalized after being hit with a sap outside the DKA offices. Final Notice gets off to a similar start as Ed Dorsey is hospitalized after being beaten by two thugs outside the DKA offices. The beating seems to be tied to the repossession of a Cadillac belonging to an aging beauty named Chandra, whose delinquent payments are suddenly and mysteriously made good. Thanks to Heslip's intervention, one of the thugs who beat Dorsey is captured and identified as a mob henchman. DKA's founder, Dan Kearny, makes it his business to find out why Dorsey was beaten, and solves a couple of murders along the way.

The plot of Final Notice isn't quite as ingenious as that of Dead Skip, but it ties together nicely at the end. The pace is swift and the process of detection is fascinating. Characters come to life, particularly Giselle, a DKA employee whose ill-advised affair with a banker is a central focus of the story. Gores' prose is tight and suitably hard-boiled without becoming a parody. It's unfortunate this novel is out of print. Seek it out if you like first rate detective fiction.

RECOMMENDED

Dead Skip by Joe Gores

First published in 1972

Barton Heslip has had a good day, repossessing three cars for his employer, DKA. Back at the office, he calls his friend and co-worker Larry Ballard, then steps outside to collect some paperwork from his car. Someone emerges from the shadows and hits him with a sap. Now Heslip is in a coma, having been pulled from a car that went over a cliff, and Dan Kearny, founder of DKA, has given Ballard 72 hours to find the man who tried to kill Heslip. As time begins to run out, Kearny joins the hunt.

Dead Skip is a fast-paced, carefully plotted detective story. Joe Gores has a sharp eye for the people who walk San Francisco's streets and a finely tuned ear for dialog. He writes with an economical style, providing just enough detail to give personality to his characters and authenticity to his settings. The mystery of Heslip's assailant isn't easy to guess but the resolution is credible. The process of detection, as practiced by Ballard and then by Kearny, is fascinating. Each comes to the same conclusion by independent means, a plot device that makes the story even more interesting.

It's a shame Dead Skip isn't still in print. It deserves the status of a genre classic.

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