Claire DeWitt is not your average private investigator. She has brilliant deductive skills 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 late, great, and mysterious French detective Jacques Silette. 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 a 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. Littered with memories of Claire's years as a girl detective in 1980s Brooklyn, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead is a knockout start to a bracingly original new series.