Genre: Mystery Thriller & Suspense
I discovered this at https://crimereads.com/the-10-best-crime-novels-of-the-last-decade/ Is there a mystery here? Absolutely. Is there a detective? Claire Dewitt claims to be the world’s greatest detective. At least in her own mind. And her mind is exceedingly complicated. But if you’re looking for a crime novel, that is not the main track of this story. A crime does indeed occur and Claire unravels the mystery, but the story is as much about the mysteries of life as it is about this particular crime.
While she is in California, Claire gets a call from a new client in New Orleans who wants her to find his uncle, Vic Willing, a prosecutor. The story is set a year or two after Katrina when the city was devastated by flood waters, and the city of New Orleans is one of the main characters in the book. There is none of the buzz and pulse and bright lights of touristy New Orleans. Houses are falling over. Buildings are abandoned. Garbage and death are everywhere, and it is a war zone populated by gangs and drive-by shootings. And Claire has little respect for the police or the criminal justice system. “New Orleans’ labyrinthine legal system, based on the Napoleonic Code, didn’t help matters. Put it all together and New Orleans had both the highest murder rate and one of the lowest conviction rates in the country.”
She is haunted by memories of her mentor, Constance Darling, who introduced her to Jacques Silette. “Jacques Silette was a genius. So I thought.” Gran does such a good job developing this fictional character that I had to do a Google search to determine if Silette or his book Détection was actually real. One of the numerous threads in the story is learning to see the world and its accompanying clues as Silette saw them. Détection magically permeates many parts of Gran’s story - levels removed from reality by Gran to Dewitt to Constance Darling to Silette. The dominant characters in the story are Silette and New Orleans.
This is not a cozy, quick read, comfy chair crime story. And it’s definitely worth reading.