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A review by lauraborkpower
Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway by Sara Gran
4.0
I am withholding a fifth star until I have a nice sit-down with Ms. Gran to give her the following: one smack upside the head, and then 1 million high-fives. Not necessarily in that order.
I wrote this about her first Claire DeWitt book, CDW and the City of the Dead, and I'll write it again: I'd like to write a book just like this. Claire is an amazing character, and a fantastic detective. She's a coke-snorting, green tea-drinking, sex-having private fu@#ing detective. She apologizes for nothing and is hell bent on destroying herself. Which is why Gran gets both the smack upside the head and the high fives: because DeWitt is right on the edge of destruction there at the end of the book, and Gran just walks away. She leaves the reader with a few mysteries solved, though of course, not all.
What Gran does beautifully is give us a story that builds on Claire's character in the present and not-so-distant past--with the mystery of Paul's death--and builds on Claire's adolescent character as a budding detective--with the Case of the End of the World and the stories about Tracy. By layering more information about Tracy, and the very important clue about her contacting Chloe, Gran is building a character, a single mystery, and a rich series of books inching satisfyingly toward a payoff.
Now, do I really think that Gran will let Claire die before we figure out the truth about Tracy's disappearance? Absolutely not. But she'd better have book #3 in the can and ready for a Fall 2014 publication or that smack upside the head will be strong.
I wrote this about her first Claire DeWitt book, CDW and the City of the Dead, and I'll write it again: I'd like to write a book just like this. Claire is an amazing character, and a fantastic detective. She's a coke-snorting, green tea-drinking, sex-having private fu@#ing detective. She apologizes for nothing and is hell bent on destroying herself. Which is why Gran gets both the smack upside the head and the high fives: because DeWitt is right on the edge of destruction there at the end of the book, and Gran just walks away. She leaves the reader with a few mysteries solved, though of course, not all.
What Gran does beautifully is give us a story that builds on Claire's character in the present and not-so-distant past--with the mystery of Paul's death--and builds on Claire's adolescent character as a budding detective--with the Case of the End of the World and the stories about Tracy. By layering more information about Tracy, and the very important clue about her contacting Chloe, Gran is building a character, a single mystery, and a rich series of books inching satisfyingly toward a payoff.
Now, do I really think that Gran will let Claire die before we figure out the truth about Tracy's disappearance? Absolutely not. But she'd better have book #3 in the can and ready for a Fall 2014 publication or that smack upside the head will be strong.