Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead

By: Sara Gran

Narrated by: Carol Monda

Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

Claire DeWitt is not your average private investigator. She has brilliant skills of deduction and is an ace at discovering evidence. But Claire also uses her dreams, omens, and mind-expanding herbs to help her solve mysteries, and relies on Détection—the only book published by the great and mysterious French detective Jacques Silette before his death.

The tattooed, pot-smoking Claire has just arrived in post-Katrina New Orleans, the city she’s avoided since her mentor, Silette’s student Constance Darling, was murdered there. Claire is investigating the disappearance of Vic Willing, a prosecutor known for winning convictions in a homicide-plagued city. Has an angry criminal enacted revenge on Vic? Or did he use the storm as means to disappear? Claire follows the clues, finding old friends and making new enemies—foremost among them Andray Fairview, a young gang member who just might hold the key to the mystery.

©2011 Original material by Sara Gran. (P)2011 HighBridge Company

Not for me

If you like noir, New Orleans and your detectives about as gritty and earthy as they come, you may have found your match. I didn't.

Utterly humorless. Could not finish. Dreary.

I could not get interested in this dreary humorless story about a totally unsympathetic character. Sorry.

No Plot

Any additional comments?

This book goes on and on and on about New Orleans and the 'storm' with the description. ENOUGH already. goodness - I wasted my money on this one, as there is no real plot, no real mystery. Poorly written in this aspect. I would recommend a pass on this one to anyone that likes a good moving book

Mostly Disappointed but it was Quick

I really wanted to enjoy this book because it was recommended by others and I liked the title. I found myself yawning through most of it due to the redundancies of storyline and approach: I've read this character and her problems before and the ending was pretty formulaic.

Doesn’t Age Well

OY! No! White authors creating Black characters using Ebonics… I thought we’d decided to stop doing that after The Help. There’s a good reason… it’s impossible for white people to do it without falling into STEREOTYPES and exposing their lack of understanding about the actual inner life of Black people. The lead character is supposed to be this free spirit and yet she doesn’t understand there are no state solutions that work for Black people. She advises a young, black trauma survivor to TURN HIMSELF OVER TO THE COPS BECAUSE ITS WHAT’S RIGHT!?!? And the Black people don’t laugh her out of New Orleans. Only a white lady could come up with something that dumb. Only other white people would publish it. 😬

Horrible Narration

What didn’t you like about Carol Monda’s performance?

Sounded like a comedian when they are doing a joke about detectives.
Very forced and horrible accents - French -southern -all of them.
I had really good run of great narrators and forgot to preview.

Adult themes

I wish I had known the amount and frequency of the "F" word and other slang. This is a dark book with pedophilia themes. I hate the words Adult themes or mature audiences. Adult SHOULD not mean sex, violence and guttural language that means nothing. But it does. There are some good quotes in the book, "People don't really want their mysteries to be solved". "People ignore the clues that are in front of them". All true.

These singular truths however are not worth reading the book.

Pulling weeds became more interesting

Really. A good listen takes you away from no-brainer yard work. Listening to this book, I found myself paying more attention to the weeds I was pulling. Most detective novels operate on two levels: the detection plot (find a missing person, solve a murder) and the personal plot (detective's personal conflict). Well into the book, I was still looking for a reason to care about or be interested in the detective. Nor did I care about the missing person. What was at stake? Why did it matter that he was missing? I'm still waiting....

The narrator's smoky, hard-boiled voice lends significance to every line; the problem is that the writer doesn't earn that significance. And there were some absurdities I couldn't tolerate, such as, "Three blocks away a dalmation-labrador mix barked." This is not a paranormal mystery; the detective can't see through walls and doesn't have psychic abilities. No one can identify the mix of breeds in a mutt by hearing its bark. In her attempt to create atmosphere and make New Orleans a character, the author throws in such useless details as to throw the listener right out of the book.

Didn't enjoy

The story was slow and the voice drove me nuts.. The story never really evolved into much so I didn't finish it.. I madeit through 3/4 of the book..

Don't make my mistake !

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

I can't think of anyone I would suggest read this book. Not good enough even for Freshman high school writing class submission. Did not care about a single character or outcome of so called story.

Has Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead turned you off from other books in this genre?

While this genre might interest me in the future,Claire DeWitt will not be given another chance to waste my time or money. The narrator was a run of the mill narrator and nothing she could have done would have helped make a moment I spent on listen on this book any better. I wanted to be entertained as I listened, instead I was so bored I skipped through more than I listened to. Goes to show, again, that you will probably get what you paid for from a book.