No fancy ideas about redemption in this novel: without a trace of authorial irony, Mrs B brusquely implies that Edmund clearly deserved to die a horrible death. On page two we are told that nobody is mourning the young local heir to the manor who’s been blown up in the North Sea, because he was a bully. I am out of step with the entire reading universe, it seems, because IMO, quite apart from its stock characters and ridiculous plot lines, this historical novel of WW2 is overwritten and tasteless. From my shelves I took down the ‘hilarious’, ‘enchanting’, ‘uplifting’ and ‘profoundly moving’ The Chilbury Ladies Choir by Jennifer Ryan but abandoned it after the requisite 50 pages. I have read some rather grim books lately, and I wanted to read something more light-hearted. As the adult Claire sorts through deadly puzzles, Silette is a key figure and resource.īy adding a comic-book teen detective and an elegant French investigator to the Claire DeWitt mystery mix, Gran turns 'The Infinite Blacktop' into a thriller that is no ordinary, by-the-book crime procedural.City of the Dead is a book that made me think about all sorts of things, but I shall try not to make this review into a rant.

Adding to this element, the various crimes being probed are given names as if from a Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys series, such as 'The Clue of the Golden Butterfly' or 'The Case of the Stolen Seashell.'Ĭlaire is devoted to a French detective, Jacques Silette, who wrote a book, 'Detection.' For the teenage Claire, the book is a Rosetta Stone for solving mysteries. It then moves back and forth among three different times, places and events: 1985-86 Brooklyn, when Claire is a teenager and a friend goes missing 1999 Los Angeles, when an art world death opens a door for her career and 2011 Oakland, when Claire is in the crosshairs of a killer.Ī comic book heroine, the fictional teen detective Cynthia Silverton, oddly becomes a key figure in the multilevel mystery that Claire is out to solve. 'The Infinite Blacktop,' Gran's third Claire DeWitt detective novel, opens in Oakland, California, in 2011 with a fast-paced round of crime-scene fright after an attempt on Claire's life.

Claire dewitt mystery