The Infinite Blacktop

Claire DeWitt is a hard boiled detective who reminds me a lot of Harry Bosch and Jack Reacher. The author did a great job of keeping the focus on the current mystery while at the same time going back in time to a long unsolved mystery from Claire’s past simultaneously. It was fun trying to solve the case before Claire... but sadly, I don't think being a detective is in the cards for me. However I thoroughly enjoyed the journey.

Five million stars.

But wait, if I rate this book that high, what does that make [b:Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead|9231999|Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead|Sara Gran|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1312909281s/9231999.jpg|14112168]? 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 [b:Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway|15814401|Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway|Sara Gran|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1368071910s/15814401.jpg|21540836], 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 show more 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 [b:Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead|9231999|Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead|Sara Gran|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1312909281s/9231999.jpg|14112168]. 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/2018/06/07/claire-dewitt-and-the-infinite-blackt... show less

In The Infinite Blacktop, Sara Gran’s third Claire DeWitt novel, someone has rammed Claire’s car off the road in Oakland, California, and she’s convinced that she’s the only one who can solve the mystery of who wants her dead. Recovering quickly from serious injuries, Claire is soon giving chase to her assailant, a man driving a Lincoln: a chase that takes her to Las Vegas. Another thread of the story flashes back to 1985 Brooklyn, New York, with teenage Claire and her friends Kelly and Tracy solving crimes in their free time between classes, until, that is, Tracy goes missing, leaving no clue behind to her whereabouts. The third thread takes us to 1999. Claire has just arrived in California following the death of her mentor, show more Constance Darling, and, in order to accumulate enough working hours to obtain her California PI license, takes on the cold case of a murdered painter named Merritt Underwood. Claire’s methods are unconventional. A follower of the French detective Jacques Silette, who, in his ground-breaking but obscure book Detection, advocates reliance on intuition and one’s own senses over forensic evidence, Claire works alone, trusts almost no one, and shuns the plodding evidence-based methods of the police. The action proceeds at breakneck speed, with lots of blood, violent confrontations, and situations in which Claire proves someone wrong and herself right, makes connections that no one has previously made, and finds answers that nobody else has been able to find. Ultimately, the three strands of the story begin to weave together, though at the end we’re still left with a few questions. The novel is elegantly structured, and though the story has a fractured feel, it is not overly challenging to follow. Claire’s cockiness takes some getting used to, particularly her self-designation as “The world’s best detective.” She is jaded and cynical and frequently comes across as arrogant, but she gets results and who can argue with that? Some plot elements strain credibility and Claire is resourceful almost beyond belief. To be fair though, the entire novel seems to take place in a world elevated above the plain of everyday human experience where the rest of us reside, so in that sense the author can be forgiven for indulging in a few excesses. Undeniably entertaining, The Infinite Blacktop is the product of a sophisticated and searching intelligence. But don’t be surprised if you find yourself with raised eyebrows now and again. show less

Claire DeWitt is in trouble. Someone is trying to kill her, and, given her relationship with the cops, she determines to find the person herself. It turns into a deep dive into her past and the many unanswered questions that exist there. We knew that at some point, she needed to face the event that made her, the disappearance of her friend/sister Tracey during their teens. Spoiler alert: given Claire, and Gran, the answers prove elusive, so if you want anything definitive, this will disappoint. Still, given that she's taking the hard boiled tropes and incorporating them into this modern story with a female POV.

Although this hardboiled existential mystery (is that a new subgenre?) contains lots of great prose--including spot on descriptions of people and Los Angeles--the plot is a mess. The final "resolution" solves almost nothing, which left me disappointed. The author alludes to this futility herself when she quotes the fictional Jacques Silette:

"Unsolved mysteries bring more joy than solved mysteries. Possibilities enthrall us. Seduction is entirely a process of presenting questions, never answers..."

If you agree with the statement above, you may enjoy this book. But I prefer mysteries that can be solved.

Favorite line:
"Hard to love was a pretty good definition of humanity in general."

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 show more neat, tidy endings with clear answers, this book may not be for you.) show less

"I'm fucking up everything. Everything I've done has been a mistake."
"Yes," [redacted] said. "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."
"I can't," I said. "I can't go through this again."
"You can," [redacted] said. "You can and you will. You're tough. It's show more not like you're going to curl up and fade away. You're going to be here either way. But you have to decide to try. To try just a little. To be a little open to something good again."

If you've made it this far with Claire DeWitt, I don't think you'll be disappointed by this final novel. (Is it? I mean, it could be or it could not be. Ms. Gran left herself some options.) The negative reviews I'm seeing are from people who haven't read the first two books. Yes, Ms. Gran fills in enough of the backstory that all of it would make some sense as a standalone (probably because there was a five year gap after the publication of [b:Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway|15814401|Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway (Claire DeWitt Mysteries, #2)|Sara Gran|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1368071910l/15814401._SY75_.jpg|21540836], even though the storyline picks up right away), but



In addition to the 2011 story line of Claire trying to figure out who tried to kill her at the end of the last book, we also get the 1999 story of the case that earned Claire her California PI license, and more of her friendship with Tracy and Kelly. Claire solves most of the mysteries of her life. A few remain, should she return for a fourth book, because ultimately, CLAIRE DeWITT ALWAYS WINS. show less