When other characters react to her as if she’s crazy or volatile we have the same reaction she does-don’t they understand that Silette’s method works? A casual scene that reveals DeWitt has multiple tattoos on her arms and back is almost shocking-until then the reader barely knows what she looks like. What’s immensely interesting is that, even though the story is told from DeWitt’s point of view, we know very little about her. In a genre where few heroines distinguish themselves from the crowd, Gran’s DeWitt is remarkably unique. When DeWitt writes down a missing victim’s breakfast, she remembers this: Pink clovers.

And in Gran’s hands Claire’s techniques are turned into pure poetry. While it might sound trite, this early case is exemplary of the methodology that makes Claire the great detective she is. They are trying to find a missing acquaintance-the rewards upon completion will be the staff discount at their favorite clothing shop.

Before that, she and Claire made a great team, two like-minded disciples of Jacques Silette. Tracy becomes a mystery herself when she unexpectedly disappears from a Brooklyn subway station in the late 1980s. While she’s solving her ex-boyfriend’s murder, she’s remembering one of the first cases she and her friend Tracy solved. It’s not unlike her to interview someone and then slip into their bathroom and steal their pain medication, doping up on expired Vicodin and Valium. DeWitt delves into the seedier aspects of these marvelous cities while simultaneously trying to numb herself to the associated emotional trauma of old relationships. Gran’s series possesses a Philip Marlowe quality with both location and character-her first book took place in New Orleans, while the second is set in San Francisco. In this particular case, DeWitt’s ex-boyfriend, still very dear to her, has been killed, and she intuitively knows it’s not the botched breaking and entering suspected by the police. The Kali Yuga is actually a fairly complex philosophical idea (don’t worry, she explains everything quite clearly). In “Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway,” she’s solving the Case of the Kali Yuga.

DeWitt is first introduced in Gran’s 2011 “Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead” in which she solves the Case of the Green Parrot.

In Silette’s world, clues come in unexpected places-dreams, tattoos, fingerprints-not those found on a glass or a gun, but the actual whorls and arches of the finger’s print. As teenagers, Claire and two friends found a life-changing book by French detective Jacques Silette, “Détection,” and started practicing his peculiar methods. Miserable, drug-abusing, pill-popping, possibly insane-she’s nevertheless one of the greatest private eyes in the world. Sara Gran has created an amazing character in Claire DeWitt, the detective in her brilliant series.

Claire dewitt books