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Claire DeWitt Mysteries #3
The Infinite Blacktop
Claire DeWitt, the world’s best private detective, wakes up one dark night in an ambulance in Oakland: someone has just tried to murder her. But she’s not dead. Not yet.
More sure of herself than of the police, Claire follows the clues on a 52-hour odyssey through shimmering Las Vegas and the shabby surrounding desert to find out who wants her dead. But in order to save herself, Claire will have to revisit her own complicated past as she navigates the present: a past of childhood obsessions, rival detectives, lost friends, and mysteries mostly—but not always—solved.
Three intertwining stories illuminate three eras of Claire’s life: her early years as an ambitious girl detective in Brooklyn (before it was gentrified), which ended when her best friend and partner in crime-solving disappeared; a case of an unexplained death in the art world of late-1990s Los Angeles, when, devastated by the demise of her mentor in New Orleans, Claire was forced to start again; and her current quest to save her own life from a determined assassin.
As the connections between the stories come into focus, the truth becomes clear. But Claire, battered and bruised, will never quit her search for the answer to the biggest mystery of all: how can anyone survive in a world so clearly designed to break our hearts?
More sure of herself than of the police, Claire follows the clues on a 52-hour odyssey through shimmering Las Vegas and the shabby surrounding desert to find out who wants her dead. But in order to save herself, Claire will have to revisit her own complicated past as she navigates the present: a past of childhood obsessions, rival detectives, lost friends, and mysteries mostly—but not always—solved.
Three intertwining stories illuminate three eras of Claire’s life: her early years as an ambitious girl detective in Brooklyn (before it was gentrified), which ended when her best friend and partner in crime-solving disappeared; a case of an unexplained death in the art world of late-1990s Los Angeles, when, devastated by the demise of her mentor in New Orleans, Claire was forced to start again; and her current quest to save her own life from a determined assassin.
As the connections between the stories come into focus, the truth becomes clear. But Claire, battered and bruised, will never quit her search for the answer to the biggest mystery of all: how can anyone survive in a world so clearly designed to break our hearts?
290 pages, Hardcover
First published September 18, 2018
301 people are currently reading
3391 people want to read
About the author
Sara Gran
16 books2,019 followersSara Gran's most recent book is LITTLE MYSTERIES, available from Dreamland Books on 2/11/25. She is the author of 7 1/2 previous novels, a screenwriter, and a publisher.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 444 reviews
November 6, 2018
Five million stars.
But wait, if I rate this book that high, what does that make Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead? Fucking awesome, of course, but I rated that five stars as well. Yet these were two very different, powerful reads.
Since we parted ways with Claire way back in 2013 in Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway, Sara Gran started writing for Southland, apparently as one of the main writers in 2012 and 13. Claire left a very significant mystery unsolved, and so I scouted everywhere for signs of Gran's activity. But is she John Scalzi? No. She, like Claire, doesn't appear to care if anyone knows who she is.
"San Fransisco didn't throw open her arms and welcome me to her bosom. No place ever had. But the only unhappy residents whose opinions I had to care about were the police."
She was on some social media for a while, then briefly, Twitter, and then she dropped off the face of the earth as far as the internet knew. She lost her domain name, apparently, and started a new site, but much like the first, updated it about once a year. I began to despair that much like Claire, Gran had immersed herself in drugs and mystery, and for the first time in my life, began to fret about an author. There is too much complication in Claire to be anything but semi-autobiographal, I thought.
And then rumors started to leak in early 2018 about a new Claire book. I wrote it down, forgot about it, and when it finally hit NetGalley, Dan was kind enough to let me know.
Oh, the book? The book is, quite possibly, the I-Ching, a bound Tarot deck, an astrological guide, or a fortune cookie. Much like City of the Dead, it spoke to me in complex ways that seemed to contain life lessons. I was coming home from a ten-day vacation and had a lot to process. As always, Claire seemed to speak to my soul, but this time, we were both older, both more mature. Claire was fighting bitterness and despair, but she's always done that.
"But age isn't just time passing. It's time breaking you--your will, your heart, your beliefs. Richter's breaks were written in the deep wrinkles in his skin, in his tired posture, in his large, sagging hands."
In this book, Claire is solving the mystery of who is trying to kill her. We also go back in time to follow the case that was supposed to complete her California P.I. license application, and discover the true mystery. Through all of this, much like the prior two books, she's thinking about her two best friends from childhood who are part of her own significant mystery. It is all integrated together quite well, and the mysteries end up being rather intriguing. I'll note that this is absolutely not the place to pick up the mysteries of Claire Dewitt; start with Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead. While each larger story stands alone, Claire's personal mystery plays a role that is best appreciated through the backstory.
"People wanted to tell you the truth. They just didn't want it to be true, and they didn't know they wanted to tell it."
As always, I highlighted about ten percent of the book, but we'll all have to wait until I get my hands on a hardcover copy to share. I will note that Gran has some very dry humor regarding Los Angeles, is a keen observer of human nature, and has a lot of hard-won wisdom.
Many, many, many thanks to Dan for the heads-up, and to Netgalley and Atria books for an ARC e-book. The quotes are subject to change in the final book, but I think they give a good flavor of Gran's writing.
btw, links to a couple of Gran sites from my Wordpress review: https://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2018/...
But wait, if I rate this book that high, what does that make Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead? Fucking awesome, of course, but I rated that five stars as well. Yet these were two very different, powerful reads.
Since we parted ways with Claire way back in 2013 in Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway, Sara Gran started writing for Southland, apparently as one of the main writers in 2012 and 13. Claire left a very significant mystery unsolved, and so I scouted everywhere for signs of Gran's activity. But is she John Scalzi? No. She, like Claire, doesn't appear to care if anyone knows who she is.
"San Fransisco didn't throw open her arms and welcome me to her bosom. No place ever had. But the only unhappy residents whose opinions I had to care about were the police."
She was on some social media for a while, then briefly, Twitter, and then she dropped off the face of the earth as far as the internet knew. She lost her domain name, apparently, and started a new site, but much like the first, updated it about once a year. I began to despair that much like Claire, Gran had immersed herself in drugs and mystery, and for the first time in my life, began to fret about an author. There is too much complication in Claire to be anything but semi-autobiographal, I thought.
And then rumors started to leak in early 2018 about a new Claire book. I wrote it down, forgot about it, and when it finally hit NetGalley, Dan was kind enough to let me know.
Oh, the book? The book is, quite possibly, the I-Ching, a bound Tarot deck, an astrological guide, or a fortune cookie. Much like City of the Dead, it spoke to me in complex ways that seemed to contain life lessons. I was coming home from a ten-day vacation and had a lot to process. As always, Claire seemed to speak to my soul, but this time, we were both older, both more mature. Claire was fighting bitterness and despair, but she's always done that.
"But age isn't just time passing. It's time breaking you--your will, your heart, your beliefs. Richter's breaks were written in the deep wrinkles in his skin, in his tired posture, in his large, sagging hands."
In this book, Claire is solving the mystery of who is trying to kill her. We also go back in time to follow the case that was supposed to complete her California P.I. license application, and discover the true mystery. Through all of this, much like the prior two books, she's thinking about her two best friends from childhood who are part of her own significant mystery. It is all integrated together quite well, and the mysteries end up being rather intriguing. I'll note that this is absolutely not the place to pick up the mysteries of Claire Dewitt; start with Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead. While each larger story stands alone, Claire's personal mystery plays a role that is best appreciated through the backstory.
"People wanted to tell you the truth. They just didn't want it to be true, and they didn't know they wanted to tell it."
As always, I highlighted about ten percent of the book, but we'll all have to wait until I get my hands on a hardcover copy to share. I will note that Gran has some very dry humor regarding Los Angeles, is a keen observer of human nature, and has a lot of hard-won wisdom.
Many, many, many thanks to Dan for the heads-up, and to Netgalley and Atria books for an ARC e-book. The quotes are subject to change in the final book, but I think they give a good flavor of Gran's writing.
btw, links to a couple of Gran sites from my Wordpress review: https://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2018/...
May 19, 2018
Who tried to kill Claire DeWitt in a hit and run? That's what Claire wants to find out but will there be anything left of her when she finds her would-be killer?
A funny thing happened a few days ago. I was driving to work, pondering when/if a new Claire DeWitt book would be coming out, only to find there was a Goodreads giveaway for the newest one AND it was up on Netgalley. Naturally, I was all over it.
Fresh from the events of Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway, Claire DeWitt goes through the meat grinder yet again, subsisting on stolen drugs, grit, and shear stubbornness to find the man who tried to kill her. Claire is still Claire, the drug-doing, alcohol-drinking, ass-kicking, lying, detecting machine she's always been. She's a glorious melding of old-school locked room cozy detective heroines with the damaged goods detectives of noir fiction. The Infinite Blacktop is another one of her grand, quirky, funny, broken cases.
The book is told in three threads: one with Claire and her two teenage detective friends, Kelly and Tracy, one with Claire trying to earn her PI license while piecing together the events surrounding an artist's death, and the final one, Claire's search for the man who tried to run her down. Each thread is pretty bad ass and does a great job illustrating the journey of Claire DeWitt.
The artist thread was narrowly my favorite, showing how Claire got her IP license but also showing some vulnerability from her that she doesn't show anymore. The present day thread, with Claire barely hanging on, was nearly as interesting as the artist thread but I just wanted someone to tell Claire to slow down and maybe sleep for ten hours. Although, the world's greatest detective never slows down when she's on a case...
This book answers a lot of lingering questions from the two previous books, namely what happened to Tracy, why hasn't anyone else ever read the Cynthia Silverton books, and who left the copy of Detection, Silette's book, in the unused wing of the DeWitt home all those years ago. It was pretty satisfying conclusion to the previous two books, although I hope it isn't the last we've seen of Claire DeWitt.
I don't really know what else to say without spoiling things. Claire's Dirk Gently approach to detection is as great as it ever was. Much like the previous two books, this one was a darkly humorous, quirky, gritty train wreck.
As per the last two books, Claire just barely holds everything together while searching for her quarry, going on an odyssey of substance abuse and self-discovery while proving why she is the best detective in the world. I fucking loved it. If this is the last Claire DeWitt book, it's a hell of a high note to go out on. Five out of five stars.
A funny thing happened a few days ago. I was driving to work, pondering when/if a new Claire DeWitt book would be coming out, only to find there was a Goodreads giveaway for the newest one AND it was up on Netgalley. Naturally, I was all over it.
Fresh from the events of Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway, Claire DeWitt goes through the meat grinder yet again, subsisting on stolen drugs, grit, and shear stubbornness to find the man who tried to kill her. Claire is still Claire, the drug-doing, alcohol-drinking, ass-kicking, lying, detecting machine she's always been. She's a glorious melding of old-school locked room cozy detective heroines with the damaged goods detectives of noir fiction. The Infinite Blacktop is another one of her grand, quirky, funny, broken cases.
The book is told in three threads: one with Claire and her two teenage detective friends, Kelly and Tracy, one with Claire trying to earn her PI license while piecing together the events surrounding an artist's death, and the final one, Claire's search for the man who tried to run her down. Each thread is pretty bad ass and does a great job illustrating the journey of Claire DeWitt.
The artist thread was narrowly my favorite, showing how Claire got her IP license but also showing some vulnerability from her that she doesn't show anymore. The present day thread, with Claire barely hanging on, was nearly as interesting as the artist thread but I just wanted someone to tell Claire to slow down and maybe sleep for ten hours. Although, the world's greatest detective never slows down when she's on a case...
This book answers a lot of lingering questions from the two previous books, namely what happened to Tracy, why hasn't anyone else ever read the Cynthia Silverton books, and who left the copy of Detection, Silette's book, in the unused wing of the DeWitt home all those years ago. It was pretty satisfying conclusion to the previous two books, although I hope it isn't the last we've seen of Claire DeWitt.
I don't really know what else to say without spoiling things. Claire's Dirk Gently approach to detection is as great as it ever was. Much like the previous two books, this one was a darkly humorous, quirky, gritty train wreck.
As per the last two books, Claire just barely holds everything together while searching for her quarry, going on an odyssey of substance abuse and self-discovery while proving why she is the best detective in the world. I fucking loved it. If this is the last Claire DeWitt book, it's a hell of a high note to go out on. Five out of five stars.
January 12, 2019
The Infinite Blacktop is the third novel in Sara Gran's series featuring Claire DeWitt, The World's Greatest Detective, and it's another excellent read. DeWitt is, by almost any standard, the most unique protagonist in modern crime fiction, and it's virtually impossible to adequately capture the depth and complexity of the character in a review. Suffice it to say, she's not your grandmother's Miss Marple.
Claire was drawn to detection as a young girl, and along with her friends, Tracy and Kelly, she began solving mysteries in the middle 1980s. There was never a case the trio couldn't crack. But then one day Tracy simply disappeared, never to be seen again, and her friend's disappearance remains the only case that Claire has never been able to solve. She and Kelly came to a parting of the ways and in the years after, Claire drifted around the country, living on the margins and solving mysteries as they were presented to her. "I didn't want a steady job and I didn't want a steady life and I didn't want to love anyone," she explains.
Claire is a disciple of the famous Jacques Silette, the French author of the book Detection the bible that has guided her life and career since the time she was a teen. Only a handful of detectives are wise enough and skilled enough to understand and apply the lessons that Silette provided, but they have served Claire well.
1999 found Claire in Los Angeles, trying to accumulate enough hours under the supervision of a licensed P.I. to qualify for her own license. She takes on an unsaved cold case involving the death of an artist who died in an apparent auto accident only a few months after the death of his girlfriend who was also an artist. Twelve years later, Claire will find herself in Oakland where someone attempts to kill her by deliberately slamming his Lincoln into her smaller car. Claire wakes up in the hospital, injured and confused, but clear headed enough to know that she needs to escape the hospital and find out who wants her dead before he tries again.
Gran weaves all three tales into a narrative that jumps repeatedly from 2011 to 1985 to 1999 and back again. It can be difficult at times to follow the action, but there's never anything linear about a book featuring Claire DeWitt. You simply have to surrender to the story, let it wash over you, and go with the flow, as the kids used to say back in the day. Like the first two books in the series, it's a great trip.
Claire was drawn to detection as a young girl, and along with her friends, Tracy and Kelly, she began solving mysteries in the middle 1980s. There was never a case the trio couldn't crack. But then one day Tracy simply disappeared, never to be seen again, and her friend's disappearance remains the only case that Claire has never been able to solve. She and Kelly came to a parting of the ways and in the years after, Claire drifted around the country, living on the margins and solving mysteries as they were presented to her. "I didn't want a steady job and I didn't want a steady life and I didn't want to love anyone," she explains.
Claire is a disciple of the famous Jacques Silette, the French author of the book Detection the bible that has guided her life and career since the time she was a teen. Only a handful of detectives are wise enough and skilled enough to understand and apply the lessons that Silette provided, but they have served Claire well.
1999 found Claire in Los Angeles, trying to accumulate enough hours under the supervision of a licensed P.I. to qualify for her own license. She takes on an unsaved cold case involving the death of an artist who died in an apparent auto accident only a few months after the death of his girlfriend who was also an artist. Twelve years later, Claire will find herself in Oakland where someone attempts to kill her by deliberately slamming his Lincoln into her smaller car. Claire wakes up in the hospital, injured and confused, but clear headed enough to know that she needs to escape the hospital and find out who wants her dead before he tries again.
Gran weaves all three tales into a narrative that jumps repeatedly from 2011 to 1985 to 1999 and back again. It can be difficult at times to follow the action, but there's never anything linear about a book featuring Claire DeWitt. You simply have to surrender to the story, let it wash over you, and go with the flow, as the kids used to say back in the day. Like the first two books in the series, it's a great trip.
Read
October 20, 2018Dnf , half way though. I usually do not quit Reading a book this late in the story, but I am totally lost. Maybe my concentration level is off, or at least not sufficient enough to follow the back and forth cases in this book.
November 4, 2018
If I could give this book 10 stars, I would. So intelligent, enchanting. TIB is full of manic, dangerous energy reminding me why I became a reader in the first place.
June 8, 2018
Netgalley gave me a copy for review and this was one of the best books I've read all year. Thank you Netgalley!
Claire DeWitt is the standard, she is the beginning and also the end of my love of this genre, Claire DeWitt is the queen of my heart, Claire DeWitt is the one. Claire DeWitt is the best detective in the world. This book is rich and heartbreaking and I loved every minute of it. Gran’s dialog is as exquisite as it has ever been and her descriptions are so damn spot-on that reading them was a genuine thrill - feel truly lucky that I can’t quote from my review copy, because if I started I would be unable to stop. One of the best books that Sara Gran has ever written, and if it's the last of a trilogy, I can accept it with only a moderately heavy heart.
Claire DeWitt is the standard, she is the beginning and also the end of my love of this genre, Claire DeWitt is the queen of my heart, Claire DeWitt is the one. Claire DeWitt is the best detective in the world. This book is rich and heartbreaking and I loved every minute of it. Gran’s dialog is as exquisite as it has ever been and her descriptions are so damn spot-on that reading them was a genuine thrill - feel truly lucky that I can’t quote from my review copy, because if I started I would be unable to stop. One of the best books that Sara Gran has ever written, and if it's the last of a trilogy, I can accept it with only a moderately heavy heart.
March 29, 2023
The Infinite Blacktop is the latest in a series of ultramodern mysteries by Sara Gran and narrated by her self-proclaimed "best detective in the world" Claire DeWitt, a San Francisco private eye who in sharp contrast to literary detectives that attract people to them--usually at a party or the social event of the season--can't stand herself and can barely stand or stay sober. Published in 2018, I'd notch this installment no higher or lower than Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead or Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway, though it's unnecessary to have read either. They're all very good, but I think "innovative" might describe them best.
Beginning moments after the conclusion of Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway, our detective has survived an attempt on her life in Oakland, her rental car smashed into by a mystery man driving a Lincoln Continental. Feeling unsafe at the scene or in a hospital, DeWitt disarms a policewoman, steals her radio and flees. Despite looking and feeling like an accident victim and having no cash on her, she remedies this by stealing a purse and enough cars to get her to her first stop, protecting a woman who witnessed her accident. The next stop will be finding who's trying to kill her and why.
While DeWitt begins what she'll refer to as "the Case of the Infinite Blacktop" in 2011, the novel shifts back to 1999, when Claire has been run out of the Bay Area by police and attempts to fulfill the state requirements of the powerful California Bureau of Security and Investigative Services. She finds a licensed private eye in Los Angeles willing to supervise the remaining 400 hours of case work required for her PI license and he throws her a cold case involving a painter named Merritt Underwood who died in a car accident six years ago. The artist's parents--now deceased--believed foul play was involved. So begins "the Mystery of the CBSIS."
I didn't really know why I never had any money. I would ask for, and get, a lot for a case. I'd been working since I was a kid. No one came to me unless they were desperate and well prepared to pay, whether they could afford it or not. I didn't have an office and I didn't advertise so people generally found me the way people found a drug dealer or a bootleg movie: ask around, look for people who knew; try to read the signs. By the time a client found me they were usually willing to pay and usually I made sure they did. But I only took the cases I wanted to take and I didn't like to think about money before or after I spent it and I never bothered to collect for expenses or keep track of tax deductions or pay taxes or deal with any of it. So maybe I did know why I never had any money. Those were pretty much the reasons. Also I'd do things like give a couple hundred bucks to a cop I knew in New Orleans who was out of work or give even more to a lady I met in an Ecuadorean restaurant who was trying to get a dog shelter off the ground. I didn't do those things to be nice so much as for the cocaine-like rush of good feelings and self-aggrandizement that they brought. I didn't try to kid myself otherwise. And now, of course, I wasn't getting paid at all.
Gran adds one more time loop, hopping back to Claire's childhood in Brooklyn of 1985. With her two best friends Tracy and Kelly, she was obsessed with the Cynthia Silverton Mystery Digest, a limited-print monthly magazine. As teens, the girls formed their own private detective agency, guided by Jacques Silette, an enigmatic detective whose 1959 handbook Détection became their bible. Silette was less focused with collecting facts or working cases as he was in finding truth and solving mysteries. Silette's perfect solve rate was marred by the unsolved disappearance of his infant daughter. For all her brilliance, Claire DeWitt has likewise been unable to locate Tracy, who disappeared from a subway platform in the '80s never to be seen again.
The Infinite Blacktop (for the sake of continuity, I wonder why "Claire DeWitt" has been removed from the title) has creativity to spare. DeWitt references all her past cases by a colorful name (the Case of the Kali Yuga, the Case of the Miniature Horses). Most novels that cycle between two or more stories inevitably offer one much stronger than the other, but here, I was equally enthralled by both mysteries. Claire DeWitt does drink, fuck, smoke and snort her way through existence but those are just the vices she indulges in to fill what she's missing--the whereabouts of her sisterly friend Tracy--and not what the book is about.
Having read Sara Gran's latest novel The Book of the Most Precious Substance, it clicked that what she really loves and writes about is printing: rare books or magazines, booksellers, printing shops, paper, envelopes. The Cynthia Silverton Mystery Digest--a very clever critique of Nancy Drew--isn't there just to provide a major clue in the Case of the Infinite Blacktop. It's a wonderfully imaginative book-within-a-book. California, cars or printing are to Sara Gran what Florida, boats or real estate are to John D. MacDonald. While dreamlike and sometimes hard to wrap my arms around--a teenage detective agency sounds a lot cooler than it's made plausible--I really enjoyed visiting this world.
Beginning moments after the conclusion of Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway, our detective has survived an attempt on her life in Oakland, her rental car smashed into by a mystery man driving a Lincoln Continental. Feeling unsafe at the scene or in a hospital, DeWitt disarms a policewoman, steals her radio and flees. Despite looking and feeling like an accident victim and having no cash on her, she remedies this by stealing a purse and enough cars to get her to her first stop, protecting a woman who witnessed her accident. The next stop will be finding who's trying to kill her and why.
While DeWitt begins what she'll refer to as "the Case of the Infinite Blacktop" in 2011, the novel shifts back to 1999, when Claire has been run out of the Bay Area by police and attempts to fulfill the state requirements of the powerful California Bureau of Security and Investigative Services. She finds a licensed private eye in Los Angeles willing to supervise the remaining 400 hours of case work required for her PI license and he throws her a cold case involving a painter named Merritt Underwood who died in a car accident six years ago. The artist's parents--now deceased--believed foul play was involved. So begins "the Mystery of the CBSIS."
I didn't really know why I never had any money. I would ask for, and get, a lot for a case. I'd been working since I was a kid. No one came to me unless they were desperate and well prepared to pay, whether they could afford it or not. I didn't have an office and I didn't advertise so people generally found me the way people found a drug dealer or a bootleg movie: ask around, look for people who knew; try to read the signs. By the time a client found me they were usually willing to pay and usually I made sure they did. But I only took the cases I wanted to take and I didn't like to think about money before or after I spent it and I never bothered to collect for expenses or keep track of tax deductions or pay taxes or deal with any of it. So maybe I did know why I never had any money. Those were pretty much the reasons. Also I'd do things like give a couple hundred bucks to a cop I knew in New Orleans who was out of work or give even more to a lady I met in an Ecuadorean restaurant who was trying to get a dog shelter off the ground. I didn't do those things to be nice so much as for the cocaine-like rush of good feelings and self-aggrandizement that they brought. I didn't try to kid myself otherwise. And now, of course, I wasn't getting paid at all.
Gran adds one more time loop, hopping back to Claire's childhood in Brooklyn of 1985. With her two best friends Tracy and Kelly, she was obsessed with the Cynthia Silverton Mystery Digest, a limited-print monthly magazine. As teens, the girls formed their own private detective agency, guided by Jacques Silette, an enigmatic detective whose 1959 handbook Détection became their bible. Silette was less focused with collecting facts or working cases as he was in finding truth and solving mysteries. Silette's perfect solve rate was marred by the unsolved disappearance of his infant daughter. For all her brilliance, Claire DeWitt has likewise been unable to locate Tracy, who disappeared from a subway platform in the '80s never to be seen again.
The Infinite Blacktop (for the sake of continuity, I wonder why "Claire DeWitt" has been removed from the title) has creativity to spare. DeWitt references all her past cases by a colorful name (the Case of the Kali Yuga, the Case of the Miniature Horses). Most novels that cycle between two or more stories inevitably offer one much stronger than the other, but here, I was equally enthralled by both mysteries. Claire DeWitt does drink, fuck, smoke and snort her way through existence but those are just the vices she indulges in to fill what she's missing--the whereabouts of her sisterly friend Tracy--and not what the book is about.
Having read Sara Gran's latest novel The Book of the Most Precious Substance, it clicked that what she really loves and writes about is printing: rare books or magazines, booksellers, printing shops, paper, envelopes. The Cynthia Silverton Mystery Digest--a very clever critique of Nancy Drew--isn't there just to provide a major clue in the Case of the Infinite Blacktop. It's a wonderfully imaginative book-within-a-book. California, cars or printing are to Sara Gran what Florida, boats or real estate are to John D. MacDonald. While dreamlike and sometimes hard to wrap my arms around--a teenage detective agency sounds a lot cooler than it's made plausible--I really enjoyed visiting this world.
April 26, 2021
Claire DeWitt's swansong is a wonderful journey of self discovery filled with absolutely brilliant lines rather than great crime fiction. Reading the trilogy (skip the second if you are in a hurry) in order is recommended to get the most out of it. Gran's world view is the most appealing part of the book raw, confessional, self depreciating, sarcastic. DeWitt is not afraid to criticize every type of double standards she sees and I love her for it because she reserves the harshest vitriol for herself. Gran's writing reminded me of James Crumley it starts as noir ends up as semi autobiographical memoir about addiction, a cheaper, better, more interesting alternative to therapy. I would not be surprised if next gen crime authors cite Gran as an inspiration. Sort of like Velvet Underground, not enough people listened to them but most of those who did went on to start their own bands.
The Infinite Blacktop has three timelines. 10-15% of the book is fifteen year old DeWitt playing detective with her two friends. The disappearance of one of them has been driving DeWitt from the first book. Rest of the book is divided into the present day mystery - a continuation from the cliffhanger from the last book where a car tries to drive her off road. And a case from when she was starting off - the drunk driving death of an iconoclastic artist. I loved this part of the book. Gran analyzes what it means to be an artist. No it is not social justice and virtue signalling. She sees artists as narcissistic, needy, arrogant, insecure, obsessive and bloody brilliant. Some of the lines there are bubbling with so much honesty that I have no doubt Gran is talking about herself in that section.
DeWitt is a difficult character to like if you have never once experienced the truism "Life is Shit, Then you Die" and impossible to hate if you have felt like an outsider at any point in your life. She is a fuck up. She is a drug addict, she is a pessimistic misanthrope. She occasionally bullies innocent people to accomplish her goals. And her wit is meant to make you bleed. But don't worry, she will apologize for not bringing salt in case she sees you bleeding. But Gran insists on holding up a mirror to DeWitt and as she grows you can't help but admire her courage to look into those places of her soul that most of us would not acknowledge exists within the best of us. And when she does something good she justifies it. I didn’t do those things to be nice so much as for the cocaine-like rush of good feelings and self-aggrandizement that they brought.
I have no clue why more people are not raving about this. Maybe the drug use. I think too many readers have not realized DeWitt is a junkie with delusions of grandeur. Talking with her own visual hallucinations, the sort of confessional voice she employs are pretty much dead giveaways. If you have done psychedelics you will know they tend to put your ego/ self worth in the ring and go a dozen rounds with it, I recognized that sort of honesty in her writing. It wasn’t a logic a human could understand, but it was there nonetheless, and sometimes, if you let nature and pills open enough doors, you could just barely see the edges of it, see the shadow of the patterns, even if your eyes weren’t wide enough to see the patterns themselves. So judging it as straight crime fiction is not fair. DeWitt is solving life, not murders. Noir is essentially a man's genre so it is great to see the best modern noir I have read in years is written by a woman.
The major complaints with the book will be plot related. The ending does not solve 2/3 mysteries. It didn't really matter for me because the book spoke to be in a way few books do. For me the main mystery was whether DeWitt can drop her obsessions even after recognizing it is making her toxic. Can she forgive herself and move on? I got those answers. It is enough for me but I do hope Gran comes back with another DeWitt adventure soon. Rating - 5/5.
Quotes:It was a book that seeped into your bones and changed you from the inside. It would pierce through the lifetime of armor you had built around your heart and show you how you had protected all the wrong things, hidden your best and, like a miser, given the world your worst. The fact that this was exactly what the world had asked of you could no longer be an excuse.
All the traditions were dying out and there was just enough tradition left to make you ache for it.
Being around people I sort-of kind-of knew but didn’t want to know better was, debatably, more lonely than being alone.
Hard to love was a pretty good definition of humanity in general.
But age isn’t just time passing. It’s time breaking you—your will, your heart, your beliefs.
The Infinite Blacktop has three timelines. 10-15% of the book is fifteen year old DeWitt playing detective with her two friends. The disappearance of one of them has been driving DeWitt from the first book. Rest of the book is divided into the present day mystery - a continuation from the cliffhanger from the last book where a car tries to drive her off road. And a case from when she was starting off - the drunk driving death of an iconoclastic artist. I loved this part of the book. Gran analyzes what it means to be an artist. No it is not social justice and virtue signalling. She sees artists as narcissistic, needy, arrogant, insecure, obsessive and bloody brilliant. Some of the lines there are bubbling with so much honesty that I have no doubt Gran is talking about herself in that section.
DeWitt is a difficult character to like if you have never once experienced the truism "Life is Shit, Then you Die" and impossible to hate if you have felt like an outsider at any point in your life. She is a fuck up. She is a drug addict, she is a pessimistic misanthrope. She occasionally bullies innocent people to accomplish her goals. And her wit is meant to make you bleed. But don't worry, she will apologize for not bringing salt in case she sees you bleeding. But Gran insists on holding up a mirror to DeWitt and as she grows you can't help but admire her courage to look into those places of her soul that most of us would not acknowledge exists within the best of us. And when she does something good she justifies it. I didn’t do those things to be nice so much as for the cocaine-like rush of good feelings and self-aggrandizement that they brought.
I have no clue why more people are not raving about this. Maybe the drug use. I think too many readers have not realized DeWitt is a junkie with delusions of grandeur. Talking with her own visual hallucinations, the sort of confessional voice she employs are pretty much dead giveaways. If you have done psychedelics you will know they tend to put your ego/ self worth in the ring and go a dozen rounds with it, I recognized that sort of honesty in her writing. It wasn’t a logic a human could understand, but it was there nonetheless, and sometimes, if you let nature and pills open enough doors, you could just barely see the edges of it, see the shadow of the patterns, even if your eyes weren’t wide enough to see the patterns themselves. So judging it as straight crime fiction is not fair. DeWitt is solving life, not murders. Noir is essentially a man's genre so it is great to see the best modern noir I have read in years is written by a woman.
The major complaints with the book will be plot related. The ending does not solve 2/3 mysteries. It didn't really matter for me because the book spoke to be in a way few books do. For me the main mystery was whether DeWitt can drop her obsessions even after recognizing it is making her toxic. Can she forgive herself and move on? I got those answers. It is enough for me but I do hope Gran comes back with another DeWitt adventure soon. Rating - 5/5.
Quotes:It was a book that seeped into your bones and changed you from the inside. It would pierce through the lifetime of armor you had built around your heart and show you how you had protected all the wrong things, hidden your best and, like a miser, given the world your worst. The fact that this was exactly what the world had asked of you could no longer be an excuse.
All the traditions were dying out and there was just enough tradition left to make you ache for it.
Being around people I sort-of kind-of knew but didn’t want to know better was, debatably, more lonely than being alone.
Hard to love was a pretty good definition of humanity in general.
But age isn’t just time passing. It’s time breaking you—your will, your heart, your beliefs.
June 28, 2025
In the third installment of the Claire Dewitt series Claire is out to solve her biggest mystery--who is she?
The Infinite Blacktop picks up at the exact moment where Claire Dewitt and The Bohemian Highway leaves off. Three cases intertwine : the still unsolved mystery of the disappearance of Claire's childhood friend in 1986, a cold case Claire works on in 1999, and her current case of who is trying to kill her in the present (2011). Thematically these cases all inter-relate: the fleeting nature of happiness; that everyone wants to be seen, to matter, to be loved; and the question of one's ability to escape her past to begin again.
Gran does noir oh so well and she pulls it off brilliantly once again. Claire continues as a pill popping, ass-kicking anti-heroine who is out to solve life as much as she is solving murders.
"When your heart is broken . . . you can cling to your old, ugly, broken heart, and let it make you ugly. Or you can let that broken heart fall away and die, and let something new and beautiful be born. Your heart will break again, and nothing will change that. The only variable is if you're going to enjoy life, at least a little, between the broken hearts."
Good advice, if you can bring yourself to take it. How many of us have a wall around our hearts and refuse to to let others in and to grasp happiness when and where we can?
"But underneath it all she now saw, there had always been an undercurrent of fear. Fear of failure, fear of exposure--and worse, fear of her own darker self rising up and taking over. Now she saw how much that fear had stained her consciousness, cut into her potential for joy."
How hard it is to let go of these fears. We all have them, though they're different for each of us. And I think for many of us our deepest fear is is of knowing our true selves. Can I see and accept myself for who I am, the light and the dark? If I can't know/accept/love myself, how can I expect anyone else to care about me?
"Who are you when no one's looking? Who are you without the context you've built around yourself? Can those contexts--those connections--serve as a kind of armor to protect from the truth? And if that's the case, what might that truth be?"
This book reminds me that much of life's journey is self discovery. It's a journey I have been much more conscious of in the past decade, and I continue to ponder as I grow and change.
I'm looking forward to book #4 whenever it's published.
And remember --" Claire Dewit always wins."
Publication 2018
The Infinite Blacktop picks up at the exact moment where Claire Dewitt and The Bohemian Highway leaves off. Three cases intertwine : the still unsolved mystery of the disappearance of Claire's childhood friend in 1986, a cold case Claire works on in 1999, and her current case of who is trying to kill her in the present (2011). Thematically these cases all inter-relate: the fleeting nature of happiness; that everyone wants to be seen, to matter, to be loved; and the question of one's ability to escape her past to begin again.
Gran does noir oh so well and she pulls it off brilliantly once again. Claire continues as a pill popping, ass-kicking anti-heroine who is out to solve life as much as she is solving murders.
"When your heart is broken . . . you can cling to your old, ugly, broken heart, and let it make you ugly. Or you can let that broken heart fall away and die, and let something new and beautiful be born. Your heart will break again, and nothing will change that. The only variable is if you're going to enjoy life, at least a little, between the broken hearts."
Good advice, if you can bring yourself to take it. How many of us have a wall around our hearts and refuse to to let others in and to grasp happiness when and where we can?
"But underneath it all she now saw, there had always been an undercurrent of fear. Fear of failure, fear of exposure--and worse, fear of her own darker self rising up and taking over. Now she saw how much that fear had stained her consciousness, cut into her potential for joy."
How hard it is to let go of these fears. We all have them, though they're different for each of us. And I think for many of us our deepest fear is is of knowing our true selves. Can I see and accept myself for who I am, the light and the dark? If I can't know/accept/love myself, how can I expect anyone else to care about me?
"Who are you when no one's looking? Who are you without the context you've built around yourself? Can those contexts--those connections--serve as a kind of armor to protect from the truth? And if that's the case, what might that truth be?"
This book reminds me that much of life's journey is self discovery. It's a journey I have been much more conscious of in the past decade, and I continue to ponder as I grow and change.
I'm looking forward to book #4 whenever it's published.
And remember --" Claire Dewit always wins."
Publication 2018
December 28, 2021
I thought about how much I wanted to enjoy the sunshine and the hummingbirds and the flowers. Enjoying life as it unfolded was always hard. Since Constance died it seemed physically impossible. It was all just a long, infinite blacktop of things you'd regret not enjoying later.
This is the third and I hope not the last Claire DeWitt novel from the beautiful, esoteric mind of Sara Gran and it's been a joy to watch her writing evolve over the course of this trilogy. And while on the surface, these books are mysteries, they are really about heartbreak and connection. Redemption and resilience. Metaphysics and breaking the nose of some louse who takes credit for your work.
This book picks up right at the end of the second one. Claire DeWitt, the world's both greatest and most idiosyncratic detective, awakes banged up as hell from a hit and run that she's sure is a murder attempt. Who and why are the questions along with what will Claire do instead of going to the hospital, which is walk off with a concussion, possible broken bones, and a cop's taser. A stolen car and a handful of illegal stimulants later, Claire is out to solve the mystery of who is trying to kill her, which she is sure is connected to the greatest mystery of her life: what happened to her childhood friend Tracy, the girl who could have been the world's greatest detective.
Poor Claire has had so much pain in her life. Tracy, her mentor Constance murdered in a random mugging, investigating the homicide of the man who was probably her true love in the last book.
"I'm fucking up everything. Everything I've done has been a mistake."
"Yes...Probably. That's what it means to be a person. It means you make horrible decisions, and you fuck everything up. It means you love people, and they leave. It means sometimes no one loves you at all. That's the state of like 90 percent of humanity at any given moment. You don't need to make a religion out of it. You don't need to memorialize everything that hurts. Everything changes, and half of finding peace in life is to stop resisting it. Someone who loved you yesterday doesn't love you today. Someone you loved is gone now."
So, not to get too personal but as I read this I was flying across the country to attend what would soon be a family member's funeral and help another family member with a breakthrough Covid infection they caught while staying with them in the hospital (I'm fine, everybody is fine. Thank you science for the booster shot and monoclonal antibodies.) I sincerely love Sara Gran and the universe (and the Columbus Public Library) for sending me these words right when I needed them.
But, sometimes, a crab did get out. Change was possible. At least for crabs. Maybe for me. I saw one escape from the barrel, sidle all the way across the pier, clicking his claws on the wood all the way, and jump back into the giant, dark, mysterious ocean, where life was harder, but the rewards, on some dim foggy mornings, at least for a few minutes, at least sometimes, were worth it.
I hope all is well in your world, friends.
This is the third and I hope not the last Claire DeWitt novel from the beautiful, esoteric mind of Sara Gran and it's been a joy to watch her writing evolve over the course of this trilogy. And while on the surface, these books are mysteries, they are really about heartbreak and connection. Redemption and resilience. Metaphysics and breaking the nose of some louse who takes credit for your work.
This book picks up right at the end of the second one. Claire DeWitt, the world's both greatest and most idiosyncratic detective, awakes banged up as hell from a hit and run that she's sure is a murder attempt. Who and why are the questions along with what will Claire do instead of going to the hospital, which is walk off with a concussion, possible broken bones, and a cop's taser. A stolen car and a handful of illegal stimulants later, Claire is out to solve the mystery of who is trying to kill her, which she is sure is connected to the greatest mystery of her life: what happened to her childhood friend Tracy, the girl who could have been the world's greatest detective.
Poor Claire has had so much pain in her life. Tracy, her mentor Constance murdered in a random mugging, investigating the homicide of the man who was probably her true love in the last book.
"I'm fucking up everything. Everything I've done has been a mistake."
"Yes...Probably. That's what it means to be a person. It means you make horrible decisions, and you fuck everything up. It means you love people, and they leave. It means sometimes no one loves you at all. That's the state of like 90 percent of humanity at any given moment. You don't need to make a religion out of it. You don't need to memorialize everything that hurts. Everything changes, and half of finding peace in life is to stop resisting it. Someone who loved you yesterday doesn't love you today. Someone you loved is gone now."
So, not to get too personal but as I read this I was flying across the country to attend what would soon be a family member's funeral and help another family member with a breakthrough Covid infection they caught while staying with them in the hospital (I'm fine, everybody is fine. Thank you science for the booster shot and monoclonal antibodies.) I sincerely love Sara Gran and the universe (and the Columbus Public Library) for sending me these words right when I needed them.
But, sometimes, a crab did get out. Change was possible. At least for crabs. Maybe for me. I saw one escape from the barrel, sidle all the way across the pier, clicking his claws on the wood all the way, and jump back into the giant, dark, mysterious ocean, where life was harder, but the rewards, on some dim foggy mornings, at least for a few minutes, at least sometimes, were worth it.
I hope all is well in your world, friends.
January 22, 2019
'"Claire DeWitt," a man's voice said a minute later, full of fake good cheer and a bad imitation of friendliness. "What an honor." I knew I had a reputation and I knew he'd heard of it and I knew no one would be particularly f***ing honored by meeting up with that reputation in the flesh.' -- Claire DeWitt, P.I., certainly not in the mood for what she calls "this particular kind of bulls***"
The Infinite Blacktop picks up at the shocking and sudden car-crash climax of Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway. An injured DeWitt quickly escapes from the scene in Oakland and - after committing roughly a half-dozen felonies and misdemeanors - heads to Las Vegas to track down the involved Lincoln Continental. This story is interspersed, like the two earlier novels, with flashback scenes from her teenage years in late 80's Brooklyn, but this time another thread is added to the mix - her first big solo investigation in late 90's Los Angeles, when she was trying to earn her P.I. license.
Author Sara Gran pulls off some tricky work here -- DeWitt, already established as an anti-heroine character and unorthodox private eye protagonist, seems to be gunning to be even more unlikable in this book. I understand DeWitt is extremely peeved about nearly being the victim of a cold-blooded murder, but some of her decisions and actions in the first 100 pages are bothersome (some readers will stop having fun with this fictional story and may start dwelling on the real-life implications) and it's apparent the character's moral compass is not just damaged, but broken and possibly beyond repair. Still, her determination and resourcefulness in pursuing all evidence and closing a case is admirably near-limitless, thus she immodestly reminds readers "Claire DeWitt always wins."
Then I also thought the three competing story-lines began to get too jumbled or prolonged towards the end, and my interest waned a bit. (There was one fantasy or dream sequence that seemed superfluous and just plain odd, and could've been excised or least shortened without wrecking the overall plot.) However, Gran succeeds in pulling everything together and even delivers an 'a-ha!' revelation at the finale that helps steer DeWitt in the direction of presumably her next adventure.
The Infinite Blacktop picks up at the shocking and sudden car-crash climax of Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway. An injured DeWitt quickly escapes from the scene in Oakland and - after committing roughly a half-dozen felonies and misdemeanors - heads to Las Vegas to track down the involved Lincoln Continental. This story is interspersed, like the two earlier novels, with flashback scenes from her teenage years in late 80's Brooklyn, but this time another thread is added to the mix - her first big solo investigation in late 90's Los Angeles, when she was trying to earn her P.I. license.
Author Sara Gran pulls off some tricky work here -- DeWitt, already established as an anti-heroine character and unorthodox private eye protagonist, seems to be gunning to be even more unlikable in this book. I understand DeWitt is extremely peeved about nearly being the victim of a cold-blooded murder, but some of her decisions and actions in the first 100 pages are bothersome (some readers will stop having fun with this fictional story and may start dwelling on the real-life implications) and it's apparent the character's moral compass is not just damaged, but broken and possibly beyond repair. Still, her determination and resourcefulness in pursuing all evidence and closing a case is admirably near-limitless, thus she immodestly reminds readers "Claire DeWitt always wins."
Then I also thought the three competing story-lines began to get too jumbled or prolonged towards the end, and my interest waned a bit. (There was one fantasy or dream sequence that seemed superfluous and just plain odd, and could've been excised or least shortened without wrecking the overall plot.) However, Gran succeeds in pulling everything together and even delivers an 'a-ha!' revelation at the finale that helps steer DeWitt in the direction of presumably her next adventure.
January 31, 2019
This is book #3 in the Claire DeWitt mystery series, though this is the first time I had heard of it.
Totally enjoyed it. It's kind-of a mix of an homage to fictional female teen detectives (Nancy Drew, Scooby Doo; for this particular novel, it's a fictional comic book series) & the reality of life that things are not rosy, life is hard & usually a disappointment, most people don't care, etc. (classic noir styling, imo). And here you have Claire DeWitt, inspired by the fictional detectives when she was young, becoming a private detective in real life. A PI in a hard, dark world. Cynical & jaded, yet she's always focused on the mystery itself. It's modern noir with just the barest hint of nostalgia seeping in. Recommended.
(If you like neat, tidy endings with clear answers, this book may not be for you.)
Totally enjoyed it. It's kind-of a mix of an homage to fictional female teen detectives (Nancy Drew, Scooby Doo; for this particular novel, it's a fictional comic book series) & the reality of life that things are not rosy, life is hard & usually a disappointment, most people don't care, etc. (classic noir styling, imo). And here you have Claire DeWitt, inspired by the fictional detectives when she was young, becoming a private detective in real life. A PI in a hard, dark world. Cynical & jaded, yet she's always focused on the mystery itself. It's modern noir with just the barest hint of nostalgia seeping in. Recommended.
(If you like neat, tidy endings with clear answers, this book may not be for you.)
November 9, 2018
Doesn't look at all like my kind of book. Protag is Claire DeWitt, who calls herself the Best Detective in the World. If I saw Claire headed my way, I would cross the street, if not run away. The book opens with a traffic "accident", that Claire thinks was an attempt to murder her. She's on the gurney in the ambulance, pulls herself together, assaults a woman police officer and steals her radio and Taser. A bit later, she goes into a bar, and steals a woman's purse. Then she steals an old car, likely from a poor person. Yeah, she had a tough childhood, but do I want to read a book about a protag like this? No, I do not. I usually don't care for noir, but it got high marks here. Oh, well.
Due back in a few days. I'll let it sit a bit, but likely headed for an early DNF.
OK, closing it out. I *hated* the stuff I mentioned above. Clearly not for me.!
Due back in a few days. I'll let it sit a bit, but likely headed for an early DNF.
OK, closing it out. I *hated* the stuff I mentioned above. Clearly not for me.!
October 2, 2020
good mystery, great stories, well woven accounts. what fascinated me the most, though, was how accurately depression and existential despair are demonstrated in Claire De Witt.
September 3, 2018
"Experience was just a long, infinite, blacktop of things you'd regret not enjoying later." *
The world's most experienced (and self-proclaimed) greatest private investigator is back right where we left off at the cliffhanger ending of book two (Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway).
Leaving the scene of the car accident in Oakland, Claire is headed to Las Vegas. She was originally headed there in search of a friend but now she's searching for the driver of the Lincoln that ran her off the road and the press that printed the Cynthia Silverton mysteries she read in her youth.
Each novel in this series has given us important flashbacks to cases she has worked in the past that somehow relate to a present situation, most importantly the disappearance of her best friend Tracy when they were teenage detectives in Brooklyn reading Cynthia Silverton from a bookmobile in their neighborhood. Claire recently learned that the books were a very limited run printed in Vegas in the 1980's and copies are extremely rare.
While searching for the Lincoln driver and the printing press, she looks back on her first case in Los Angeles while applying for her PI license. The cold case involved the mysterious death of a highly regarded painter in a car accident not long after his girlfriend, another successful artist, also died in a tragic car accident.
Tracy's disappearance, the cold case, and the present converge as Claire searches for answers in her trademark mystic drug induced haze where nothing is coincidence, only fate.
The Infinite Blacktop is another stellar book in Gran's modern gritty/noir detective series! I love that each novel is a mystery within a mystery and everything is somehow linked. Claire always solves her current case with guidance from a previous case and is fueled by the haunting memories of the only case she can't seem to solve. We're given more clues with each book and this novel has us headed down a rabbit hole with all the new information we have on the Cynthia Silverton mysteries and the disappearance of Tracy.
Fingers crossed Gran doesn't make us wait another five years for a new Claire DeWitt mystery because this has quickly become my favorite modern detective series and I need more answers!!
Many thanks to Atria Books and NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest review. The Infinite Blacktop is scheduled for release on September 18, 2018.
*The quote included was taken from an advanced readers copy and is subject to change upon publication.
For more full reviews, visit www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com
The world's most experienced (and self-proclaimed) greatest private investigator is back right where we left off at the cliffhanger ending of book two (Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway).
Leaving the scene of the car accident in Oakland, Claire is headed to Las Vegas. She was originally headed there in search of a friend but now she's searching for the driver of the Lincoln that ran her off the road and the press that printed the Cynthia Silverton mysteries she read in her youth.
Each novel in this series has given us important flashbacks to cases she has worked in the past that somehow relate to a present situation, most importantly the disappearance of her best friend Tracy when they were teenage detectives in Brooklyn reading Cynthia Silverton from a bookmobile in their neighborhood. Claire recently learned that the books were a very limited run printed in Vegas in the 1980's and copies are extremely rare.
While searching for the Lincoln driver and the printing press, she looks back on her first case in Los Angeles while applying for her PI license. The cold case involved the mysterious death of a highly regarded painter in a car accident not long after his girlfriend, another successful artist, also died in a tragic car accident.
Tracy's disappearance, the cold case, and the present converge as Claire searches for answers in her trademark mystic drug induced haze where nothing is coincidence, only fate.
The Infinite Blacktop is another stellar book in Gran's modern gritty/noir detective series! I love that each novel is a mystery within a mystery and everything is somehow linked. Claire always solves her current case with guidance from a previous case and is fueled by the haunting memories of the only case she can't seem to solve. We're given more clues with each book and this novel has us headed down a rabbit hole with all the new information we have on the Cynthia Silverton mysteries and the disappearance of Tracy.
Fingers crossed Gran doesn't make us wait another five years for a new Claire DeWitt mystery because this has quickly become my favorite modern detective series and I need more answers!!
Many thanks to Atria Books and NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest review. The Infinite Blacktop is scheduled for release on September 18, 2018.
*The quote included was taken from an advanced readers copy and is subject to change upon publication.
For more full reviews, visit www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com
July 9, 2018
Thank you Netgalley an Atria Books for the ARC.
I have to admit, first thing that attracted me to this book was the gorgious cover. Just look at it!
And sure enough, once in, the story takes off at full speed.
PI Claire gets hit by a car and escapes the ambulance, determined to investigate who did this to her and why.
I like the format of having to solve three mysteries to get there, all of them being cleverly entwined.
In 1986 Claire and her friends Tracy and Kelly spend their time as teenage PI's, until Tracy goes missing.
In 1999 Claire is putting in the hours working on a cold case of a murder in the art world, to get her official PI license from the CBSIS.
In 2011 we follow Claire's life on the road in search of whoever crashed into her in traffic and got away with it.
While moving between the cases, connections are becoming clearer, but results don't reveal themselves until the very end. By then I'm on the edge of my seat.
Fast writing, streetwise language, intrigue and excitement are combined with deep thoughts on being alone, being invisible, belonging and survival.
Fun descriptions of hallucinations when sleepdeprived.
This well crafted story is different, going back to the bare basics of who we really are.
In the end it's all about the truth, leaving no stone unturned.
I have to admit, first thing that attracted me to this book was the gorgious cover. Just look at it!
And sure enough, once in, the story takes off at full speed.
PI Claire gets hit by a car and escapes the ambulance, determined to investigate who did this to her and why.
I like the format of having to solve three mysteries to get there, all of them being cleverly entwined.
In 1986 Claire and her friends Tracy and Kelly spend their time as teenage PI's, until Tracy goes missing.
In 1999 Claire is putting in the hours working on a cold case of a murder in the art world, to get her official PI license from the CBSIS.
In 2011 we follow Claire's life on the road in search of whoever crashed into her in traffic and got away with it.
While moving between the cases, connections are becoming clearer, but results don't reveal themselves until the very end. By then I'm on the edge of my seat.
Fast writing, streetwise language, intrigue and excitement are combined with deep thoughts on being alone, being invisible, belonging and survival.
Fun descriptions of hallucinations when sleepdeprived.
This well crafted story is different, going back to the bare basics of who we really are.
In the end it's all about the truth, leaving no stone unturned.
November 9, 2018
There’s a tiny moment in the middle of INFINITE BLACKTOP I liked so much that it made me stop reading, and ask myself why. Not just why do I love this passage, but why do I love fiction, why do I love reading, what’s reading fiction even for? These are not small questions to be elicited by a scene about a lunch shared by two imaginary people, who are meeting to discuss an imaginary crime, in a story that’s entirely imaginary. What the hell kind of thing is that to love? Someone else’s imaginary story?
I admit: I was asking myself these questions at four o’clock in the morning, when Big Questions can come bursting into the room like a SWAT team. And I write fiction for a living, so the subject isn’t merely academic; it’s a regular source of introspection—what do I love reading, and why?
Here’s the fundamental answer: I love feeling that I’m truly inhabiting another person. And the more strongly I can achieve that feeling—the more an author has created a character who’s so genuine that the real me feels like I AM that fictional person—the more I love it. A step or two further along the introspection scale, I ought to examine why it is that this is something I love to do, but that’s perhaps too metaphysical for a Goodreads review, and this one is already far too much about me, so I’ll get back this terrific book: it was a tremendous joy to inhabit this character, and to meet the other characters on her journey.
I admit: I was asking myself these questions at four o’clock in the morning, when Big Questions can come bursting into the room like a SWAT team. And I write fiction for a living, so the subject isn’t merely academic; it’s a regular source of introspection—what do I love reading, and why?
Here’s the fundamental answer: I love feeling that I’m truly inhabiting another person. And the more strongly I can achieve that feeling—the more an author has created a character who’s so genuine that the real me feels like I AM that fictional person—the more I love it. A step or two further along the introspection scale, I ought to examine why it is that this is something I love to do, but that’s perhaps too metaphysical for a Goodreads review, and this one is already far too much about me, so I’ll get back this terrific book: it was a tremendous joy to inhabit this character, and to meet the other characters on her journey.
August 28, 2019
5+ out of 5.
Holy shit.
It's been five years since we last heard from Claire DeWitt, but only moments have passed since the end of Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway. And just like THAT, we're back into her strange fractured world, a world of existential mysteries and mundane ones, a world that is absolutely the one we live in, just seen differently. We make progress towards Claire's ultimate mystery, the one mystery she's been unable to solve, and we see a key sequence from her past -- but even more than that, we are treated to a lost story, a moment of deep and wild revelation, a spiritual opening-up that one does not expect to encounter in a mystery novel.
I hope Sara Gran comes back to Claire before another five years go by. She's the world's greatest detective and we need her -- ~I~ need her -- right now, more than ever.
Holy shit.
It's been five years since we last heard from Claire DeWitt, but only moments have passed since the end of Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway. And just like THAT, we're back into her strange fractured world, a world of existential mysteries and mundane ones, a world that is absolutely the one we live in, just seen differently. We make progress towards Claire's ultimate mystery, the one mystery she's been unable to solve, and we see a key sequence from her past -- but even more than that, we are treated to a lost story, a moment of deep and wild revelation, a spiritual opening-up that one does not expect to encounter in a mystery novel.
I hope Sara Gran comes back to Claire before another five years go by. She's the world's greatest detective and we need her -- ~I~ need her -- right now, more than ever.
October 7, 2018
I LOVE Sara Gran's Claire DeWitt novels and I'm so glad there's a new one! These books are dark and twisty, mystical, and just...unusual in ways I can't quite put my finger on. Claire DeWitt is a hot mess, and the suspense is always whether she will survive at all. Although you could read this one without reading the previous novels, there is one long mystery at the heart of these novels that moves forward in the most intriguing ways in each new installment.
March 18, 2019
This installation in the Claire DeWitt series just didn't "do it" for me. For one thing, the audiobook narrator was new: I'd grown accustomed to the gruff voice of Carol Monda, and while Madeleine Maby does a fine job, she just didn't sound like Claire DeWitt anymore. On the plus side there was somewhat less gratuitous drug use and anomie this time, but I couldn't sustain interest in the stor(ies) nor the conceit of the "world's greatest detective."
May 13, 2019
Ahoy there me mateys! This here be the second book in my Scallywagathon 2019 Challenge. Challenge two was: Blow down the man: a book by a female author. The infinite blacktop was a random pick from the library based on the cover and then the blurb. It is not me usual genre but I thought it sounded too good to pass up.
This book follows Claire DeWitt who knows she is the world’s best detective. The story begins with Claire waking up confused and befuddled after a car accident. But as she begins to put the pieces back together, she realizes that the crash was an attempted murder. Who is out to kill her and why?
The story is told in three intertwining stories – two involving the past that both relate to the present investigation. What I didn’t know before beginning is that this be book #3 of a series. Despite that, I had no problem getting into the story and loved the three timelines. The present timeline was me favourite. I loved the set-up for this book. The beginning chapter was enough to capture me fancy.
Of course a lot of that stems from Claire. She is kinda crazy. Aye, she solves cases. But sometimes it be against the will of those involved. She is stubborn, full of grit, a liar, and kinda awesome. Drug use is involved. Heavy drinking is involved. Making lots of bad choices is involved. Ye want to smack her upside the head for stupidity and then get too distracted by cheering her on. Despite meself, I fell in love with her.
I am not getting too much into the plot because it’s a) slightly too complicated to explain; and b) it’s better to experience for yerself. But I am so glad I picked up this quirky, wonderful read. And I have no problem at all with having started with book three. Arrr!
Check out me other reviews at https://thecaptainsquartersblog.wordp...
This book follows Claire DeWitt who knows she is the world’s best detective. The story begins with Claire waking up confused and befuddled after a car accident. But as she begins to put the pieces back together, she realizes that the crash was an attempted murder. Who is out to kill her and why?
The story is told in three intertwining stories – two involving the past that both relate to the present investigation. What I didn’t know before beginning is that this be book #3 of a series. Despite that, I had no problem getting into the story and loved the three timelines. The present timeline was me favourite. I loved the set-up for this book. The beginning chapter was enough to capture me fancy.
Of course a lot of that stems from Claire. She is kinda crazy. Aye, she solves cases. But sometimes it be against the will of those involved. She is stubborn, full of grit, a liar, and kinda awesome. Drug use is involved. Heavy drinking is involved. Making lots of bad choices is involved. Ye want to smack her upside the head for stupidity and then get too distracted by cheering her on. Despite meself, I fell in love with her.
I am not getting too much into the plot because it’s a) slightly too complicated to explain; and b) it’s better to experience for yerself. But I am so glad I picked up this quirky, wonderful read. And I have no problem at all with having started with book three. Arrr!
Check out me other reviews at https://thecaptainsquartersblog.wordp...
October 3, 2021
Summary: In the third Claire DeWitt mystery novel (which you by no means have to read the first or second to appreciate), Claire is try to figure out who her attempted murderer is. Author Sara Gran weaves together three different points in Claire's life in order to bring us to that point.
Wow. Just absolutely wow. I'm not usually a mystery fan, but this blew me away. I picked up this book because I had won it from Goodreads Giveaways, and I wanted to read it and review it before it came out on September 18th. I also needed a shift of pace from the plethora of fantasy, sci-fi, and magical realism that I've been reading since I finished school on May 24th. So, when The Infinite Blacktop arrived, I decided it was the perfect book for the time, even if I was getting myself into a genre that I hadn't read in years (I think the last book I read that was truly a mystery was a Nancy Drew novel. Yeah. that's how long it's been).
When the book arrived, I was a little weary of it because I almost never request sequels if I haven't read the previous book(s) in the series. When I entered the giveaway for The Infinite Blacktop, I had no idea that it was the third book in a series. I was worried that I would be missing a lot because I hadn't read the first two books, but almost as soon as I started the story, I knew I had nothing to worry about. As far as I could tell, the novel was completely independent of the other ones (whose summaries I read), and there were only a few recurring moments.
But okay, now for the extreme feelings that I had while reading this book. As I said at the beginning of my review, wow. I am thoroughly impressed with the way Sara Gran writes. First of all, there was all the emotion Gran put into every aspect of the story. From the beginning, the three stories compiled into one novel intertwined beautifully. At first, I didn't see where the novel was going, or how the three stories were related. However, as soon as I noticed the recurring theme of finding oneself, I understood. I believe that, in a sense, Gran's essential purpose in writing the novel was the idea of self discovery, and the mysteries were only a portion of that self-discovery.
One other thing I loved was the subtle gender implications. There was definitely not too much of the book; too much of something that screamed, "I am a feminist novel solely because I portray strong women." But the undertones were there, and they were amazing. One example is after she solves one case and sees the man who takes the credit for all of her work, a man who had dropped the particular case years ago. The whole novel just made me think so much about women's roles and women who do amazing things, but get pushed into the shadows.
Before reading this, I've never considered the life of a detective before. You see so much, and there's so much that happens. It must really take a toll on you.
I am very grateful to Sara Gran and the Simon & Schuster publishing company for providing this giveaway.
If Gran or any of the publishing or editing team happens to read this, I want to give you a little detail that I noticed that will help with editing before the release date. On page 95, there is an instance when you refer to Claude, but I am pretty sure you meant to say Carl. The sentence is "But I knew that Merritt occupied a lot of mental and emotional and maybe spiritual real estate in Claude." I hope this is helpful in the editing process.
Disclaimer:
Wow. Just absolutely wow. I'm not usually a mystery fan, but this blew me away. I picked up this book because I had won it from Goodreads Giveaways, and I wanted to read it and review it before it came out on September 18th. I also needed a shift of pace from the plethora of fantasy, sci-fi, and magical realism that I've been reading since I finished school on May 24th. So, when The Infinite Blacktop arrived, I decided it was the perfect book for the time, even if I was getting myself into a genre that I hadn't read in years (I think the last book I read that was truly a mystery was a Nancy Drew novel. Yeah. that's how long it's been).
When the book arrived, I was a little weary of it because I almost never request sequels if I haven't read the previous book(s) in the series. When I entered the giveaway for The Infinite Blacktop, I had no idea that it was the third book in a series. I was worried that I would be missing a lot because I hadn't read the first two books, but almost as soon as I started the story, I knew I had nothing to worry about. As far as I could tell, the novel was completely independent of the other ones (whose summaries I read), and there were only a few recurring moments.
But okay, now for the extreme feelings that I had while reading this book. As I said at the beginning of my review, wow. I am thoroughly impressed with the way Sara Gran writes. First of all, there was all the emotion Gran put into every aspect of the story. From the beginning, the three stories compiled into one novel intertwined beautifully. At first, I didn't see where the novel was going, or how the three stories were related. However, as soon as I noticed the recurring theme of finding oneself, I understood. I believe that, in a sense, Gran's essential purpose in writing the novel was the idea of self discovery, and the mysteries were only a portion of that self-discovery.
One other thing I loved was the subtle gender implications. There was definitely not too much of the book; too much of something that screamed, "I am a feminist novel solely because I portray strong women." But the undertones were there, and they were amazing. One example is after she solves one case and sees the man who takes the credit for all of her work, a man who had dropped the particular case years ago. The whole novel just made me think so much about women's roles and women who do amazing things, but get pushed into the shadows.
Before reading this, I've never considered the life of a detective before. You see so much, and there's so much that happens. It must really take a toll on you.
I am very grateful to Sara Gran and the Simon & Schuster publishing company for providing this giveaway.
If Gran or any of the publishing or editing team happens to read this, I want to give you a little detail that I noticed that will help with editing before the release date. On page 95, there is an instance when you refer to Claude, but I am pretty sure you meant to say Carl. The sentence is "But I knew that Merritt occupied a lot of mental and emotional and maybe spiritual real estate in Claude." I hope this is helpful in the editing process.
Disclaimer:
July 7, 2018
Claire DeWitt is back, sharp and self deprecating, she breezes through experiences that would flatten anyone of lesser strength. Even when trying to solve mysteries on no sleep while chemically impaired, she prevails.
Her story opens on the mean streets of Oakland, and I must admit partiality to seeking out books that feature my home town for its setting. Someone has tried to mow her down in a vintage Lincoln, and that's just one of the puzzles she tries to unravel. Still in the background is the disappearance of her best friend in 1987, but also included is the full fledged 1999 Mystery of CBSIS in which she unravels a cold case in order to attain requisite hours to earn her PI license in California. In her reminisces, she recalls some of her successes as the "best detective in the world," with names that sound like updated Nancy Drew titles ("The Happy Burger Murder Case," "The Case of the Melancholy Bibliophile"). But she also reflects on the deeper traumas of loss, of identity, and the search for peaceful happiness.
Five years ago, I was alerted to Sara Gran's Claire DeWitt series, and read the first two novels over the space of 3 days. Admittedly, I read Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead audibly, but the fact that the reader was Melissa Leo gave the lead character an indelible identity. When reviewing the Bohemian Highway, I made two observations - dismay that Gran only intended to write 4 in this series, and that I was anxious for the next book to surface. It was worth the wait. I can only hope that she changes her mind and continues with the series.
Many thanks to Atria Books for the early ARC of this.
Her story opens on the mean streets of Oakland, and I must admit partiality to seeking out books that feature my home town for its setting. Someone has tried to mow her down in a vintage Lincoln, and that's just one of the puzzles she tries to unravel. Still in the background is the disappearance of her best friend in 1987, but also included is the full fledged 1999 Mystery of CBSIS in which she unravels a cold case in order to attain requisite hours to earn her PI license in California. In her reminisces, she recalls some of her successes as the "best detective in the world," with names that sound like updated Nancy Drew titles ("The Happy Burger Murder Case," "The Case of the Melancholy Bibliophile"). But she also reflects on the deeper traumas of loss, of identity, and the search for peaceful happiness.
Five years ago, I was alerted to Sara Gran's Claire DeWitt series, and read the first two novels over the space of 3 days. Admittedly, I read Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead audibly, but the fact that the reader was Melissa Leo gave the lead character an indelible identity. When reviewing the Bohemian Highway, I made two observations - dismay that Gran only intended to write 4 in this series, and that I was anxious for the next book to surface. It was worth the wait. I can only hope that she changes her mind and continues with the series.
Many thanks to Atria Books for the early ARC of this.
December 30, 2024
Sara Gran pushes the boundaries of literary detective fiction once more with this third Claire DeWitt novel; a dark, meta, meandering, existential tale of what it means to be alive. This is peak Sallis territory and I am in awe.
May 28, 2019
Brilliant.
Even the audio reader, Madeleine Maby, after a bad start, hit her stride after the first few pages, and did a great job of reading this.
Even the audio reader, Madeleine Maby, after a bad start, hit her stride after the first few pages, and did a great job of reading this.
May 30, 2025
I think this is the best of the series. There are three story threads. I agree with another reviewer that the art world story is the best. You canread it as a standalone, but you will get a lot more out of this book if you read them in order. The second one is definitely not up to standard, but read it anyway for filling in background.
June 18, 2018
I'm a huge Claire Dewitt fan. My favorite fictional detectives in order are Dewitt, Dirk Gently, Lionel Essrog (Motherless Brooklyn), Hank Palace (Last Policeman), Conrad Metcalf (Gun with Ocassional Music). This was the novel that I thought would answer all the questions about some of the mysteries of Claire's life. It uses narratives in 3 different time periods and does it well. You may not get the answers you want or all of them, but you will leave this book with a greater appreciation for Sara Gran and her wonderfully unconventional detective, Claire Dewitt.
October 16, 2018
I won this book in a goodreads drawing.
A fairly complicated novel about the search for family, only with three different narratives, one of them a Nancy Drew like teen sleuth.
I was reminded of HellCat from Marvel comics, a character that used to be Patsy Walker, a teen humor feature. Part of the conceit was that Patsy's mother made the comics and cashed in.
Only this was a lot darker, well, except that Patsy married a crazy man, then the Son of Satan...
A fairly complicated novel about the search for family, only with three different narratives, one of them a Nancy Drew like teen sleuth.
I was reminded of HellCat from Marvel comics, a character that used to be Patsy Walker, a teen humor feature. Part of the conceit was that Patsy's mother made the comics and cashed in.
Only this was a lot darker, well, except that Patsy married a crazy man, then the Son of Satan...
October 13, 2018
I did not like this book -- at all. it was a struggle to finish this disjointed, juvenile approach to crime fiction. because the central tale was interrupted so often with blurbs from the past, I soon found myself both distracted and disinterested in the main plot. by the time I reached the end of the book, I didn't remember the details of the original plot premise.
June 1, 2025
Upping the ante from the previous book, Gran writes not one, not two, but three different mysteries solved at three different times in the life of DeWitt.
One: the case of her lifetime that began when she was a teenager in the 1980s with the disappearance of her childhood friend and detective partner, Tracy. (Or was it Kelly? These two friends weren't easy to tell apart unfortunately.)
Two: the story of how DeWitt earned her detective license in sunny California, solving a murder mystery in the art world.
Three: in the current timeline, Claire DeWitt works on the case of her own attempted murder.
This has been uncommon detective series, especially DeWitt herself, who is excessive and unbelievable at times but always interesting. I wish Gran had maintained some of the funnier, quirkier elements from the first book, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead.
We get more about her fictional hero—teen detective Cynthia Silverton. We get more about her time with her mentor Constance. And more about her "real-life" hero, Jacques Sillette, author of Claire's detective work "bible."
“Your assumptions,” Silette wrote, “are your worst enemies. Throw away your clever thoughts. Let the rest of the world drown in lies. Rest on the life raft of truth.”
Because of the way stories collapse in on themselves, the "books within the book," and DeWitt's views on truth, reality, and mystery solving, I would put this in a league with Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy and consider it a kind of Deconstructionist detective fiction.
One thing it is not is ordinary, forgettable detective fiction.
One: the case of her lifetime that began when she was a teenager in the 1980s with the disappearance of her childhood friend and detective partner, Tracy. (Or was it Kelly? These two friends weren't easy to tell apart unfortunately.)
Two: the story of how DeWitt earned her detective license in sunny California, solving a murder mystery in the art world.
Three: in the current timeline, Claire DeWitt works on the case of her own attempted murder.
This has been uncommon detective series, especially DeWitt herself, who is excessive and unbelievable at times but always interesting. I wish Gran had maintained some of the funnier, quirkier elements from the first book, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead.
We get more about her fictional hero—teen detective Cynthia Silverton. We get more about her time with her mentor Constance. And more about her "real-life" hero, Jacques Sillette, author of Claire's detective work "bible."
“Your assumptions,” Silette wrote, “are your worst enemies. Throw away your clever thoughts. Let the rest of the world drown in lies. Rest on the life raft of truth.”
Because of the way stories collapse in on themselves, the "books within the book," and DeWitt's views on truth, reality, and mystery solving, I would put this in a league with Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy and consider it a kind of Deconstructionist detective fiction.
One thing it is not is ordinary, forgettable detective fiction.
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