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Review: Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead

Posted on by Patrick

I can’t remem­ber the sec­ond-last book that I read in a sin­gle day, but I can tell you what the last one was: Sara Gran’s Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead.

Thanks, Doug, for sug­gest­ing that I check out this author.

Claire DeWitt is hired by Leon to find out what hap­pened to his uncle Vic, the DA in New Orleans. Vic has van­ished; Leon isn’t sure if he’s alive or dead, though he sus­pects the lat­ter. Leon hired Claire because she’s the best, but she’s far from ordi­nary. A dis­ci­ple of a lit­tle-known French inves­ti­ga­tor, Jacques Silette, who wrote a sin­gle book on his inves­tiga­tive prin­ci­ples, Détec­tion, back in the ’50s. Silet­te’s style of detec­tive work is only part­ly about find­ing out who done it; it’s more about solv­ing the mys­tery of one’s own self. Every­one already knows the solu­tion, he claims; it’s just that very, very few are will­ing to accept and admit the truth.

Claire DeWitt remind­ed me of both Sher­lock Holmes and his lat­ter-day avatar Dar­ryl Zero1. She has the uncan­ny abil­i­ty to con­struct entire truths out of the thinnest of clues; after learn­ing that one young man’s sis­ter used to call him Nee-Nee, she not only divined his name (Nicholas) but also his place of birth, the num­ber of sib­lings he had, and the ice-cream par­lour where he’d most recent­ly worked. Like Holmes, too, she has a fond­ness for the drugs: booze, weed, var­i­ous mush­room-based com­pounds — heck, at least once, she smoked a joint laced with embalm­ing flu­id. (No kidding.)

But Claire is a com­plete­ly orig­i­nal cre­ation. She’s a fatal­ist, a men­tal case, a per­haps-mur­der­er. She’s a deeply flawed char­ac­ter, an anti-hero who grew up in a decay­ing man­sion, a blood-sis­ter who gave up look­ing for her best friend when she van­ished. Her men­tor was mur­dered in a ran­dom act of sense­less violence.

The set­ting, too, is key. The nov­el is set in New Orleans, post-Kat­ri­na, and the city itself is a char­ac­ter: it’s a wound­ed beast, per­haps mor­tal­ly so, try­ing des­per­ate­ly to recov­er, but it’s not clear if it can recov­er, or even if it’s worth recov­er­ing. It’s not a city for hap­py end­ings, a fact that is repeat­ed sev­er­al times, by dif­fer­ent peo­ple. It’s a warn­ing to the read­er, too: This does­n’t end well. (Does it end well? You’ll have to read it to find out.)

The sto­ry itself is taut­ly plot­ted, and moves along at a great clip. Claire’s leaps of log­ic are (most­ly) explained to the read­er, and they (most­ly) make sense in the end. The sto­ry kept me immersed, com­plete­ly — like I said, I read it in a day, some­thing I haven’t done in a long time.

I loved this book, and I eager­ly look for­ward to read­ing its sequel, Claire DeWitt and the Bohemi­an High­way.

Get it from:
McNal­ly Robinson
| Chapters/Indigo
| Ama­zon

  1. If you haven’t seen Zero Effect, hunt it down. ↩

WordPress talk: The Big Move

Posted on by Patrick

Appar­ent­ly my talk from Word­Camp Toron­to Dev has gone online.

in situ on WordCamp.tv

Found via WPDaily.co. (Holy crap, my name shows up on WPDaily.co!)

(Also: I’ve since updat­ed my code to use get_option() and its sib­lings in the Options API, rather than using $wpdb to update the options. In non-nerd words, I’m using The Word­Press Way instead of The Dumb Way.)

Maybe my Win­nipeg one will go live soon too. A boy can dream…

The Martian Chronicles

Posted on by Patrick

The first time I read Ray Brad­bury’s The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles, I was 16 or 17, in high school. All the dates were in the future, then.

The sec­ond time I read The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles, I was 40, Ray Brad­bury had recent­ly died, and only the last three chap­ters were in the “future”.

I’ve grown a lot in those twen­ty+ years. I’ve matured as a read­er and as a writer. I’ve actu­al­ly had one of my short sto­ries com­pared to Brad­bury’s writ­ing, which I thought was an immense honour.

When I was a teenag­er — heck, into my thir­ties — I was a sci­ence fic­tion snob. I sniffed in dis­dain at fan­ta­sy (except­ing, of course, Ter­ry Pratch­et­t’s oeu­vre and the then-ongo­ing Dark Tow­er saga from Stephen King — yes, I was a hyp­ocrite.) The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles was the first thing I read that meld­ed sci­ence fic­tion and fan­ta­sy — not the swords-and-sor­cery type that I was so dead-set against back then (and still am not a huge fan of), but the sub­tler fan­ta­sy that allows a rock­et launch to turn win­ter into flow­ers-bloom­ing sum­mer for a day. The fan­ta­sy that has a trav­el­er on a lone­ly road meet­ing up with a Mar­t­ian mil­len­nia dead, a Mar­t­ian that views him as the ghost instead. A John­ny-Apple­seed fig­ure that plants oaks that grow large enough to pro­vide shade in a sin­gle night.

There’s a poet­ry to Brad­bury’s writ­ing, the same sort of poet­ry that I find in William Gib­son’s writ­ing, though in a very dif­fer­ent way. They both have a tal­ent for find­ing le mot juste, that elu­sive turn of phrase that makes every­thing clear in the read­er’s mind.

If you haven’t read The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles, go, do so.

Things I never want to do again

Posted on by Patrick

Dri­ve down a flood­ing avenue — and a major traf­fic artery to boot — in a truck with crap­py wiper blades on a wiper motor that ran­dom­ly just stops, on bald tires, with iffy brakes, dur­ing a tor­ren­tial down­pour with hail ping­ing off the roof. Oh, and the defrost isn’t work­ing worth a darn so the win­dows keep fog­ging up. All the windows.

Who needs hor­ror movies?

Brandon Genre Reading

Posted on by Patrick

This com­ing week­end, I’ll be one of four sci­ence-fic­tion and fan­ta­sy authors read­ing at Bran­don Uni­ver­si­ty’s Ele­phant Room. I’ll be read­ing a few dif­fer­ent things — a short sto­ry, a cou­ple micro-sto­ries, and an excerpt from my novel-in-progress.

Who’s all reading

  • Shen Braun, a con­trib­u­tor to Tesser­acts 15
  • Chad­wick Ginther, author of Thun­der Road [curs­es, I still haven’t reviewed that — sor­ry, Chad­wick] and a con­trib­u­tor to Tesser­acts 16
  • Craig Rus­sell, author of Black Bot­tle Man [my review]
  • Patrick Johan­neson, a con­trib­u­tor to Tesser­acts 14

Bran­don Uni­ver­si­ty’s Cam­pus Books will have copies on hand of Tesser­acts 14 through 16, Black Bot­tle Man, and Thun­der Road on hand for pur­chase. I can’t speak for the oth­er three 1, but I’ll hap­pi­ly sign what­ev­er you put in front of me.

Cof­fee, juice, water, and light snacks will be on hand. See you there!

  1. That said, I’d be sur­prised if they were unwill­ing to sign things. ↩

Apprenticeship Reading

Posted on by Patrick

Since Jan­u­ary, I’ve been men­tor­ing two six­teen-year-old appren­tices, Becky & Tan­ner, in cre­ative writ­ing under a pro­gram by ACI. It’s been a great time, and we’ve cov­ered a lot of ground: char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, world-build­ing, plot out­lin­ing, essay writ­ing, the whole copy­right / licens­ing / Cre­ative Com­mons imbroglio, edit­ing, tax­es and what you can legit­i­mate­ly claim, infi­nite libraries, and a pile of oth­er topics.

Today, we held a small friends-and-fam­i­ly read­ing. I read my short sto­ry Exit Inter­view, Becky read a 2nd-per­son short sto­ry (“The Great Ant Race”) and a snip­pet from her nov­el-in-progress The Cigám Tri­ad, and Tan­ner gave a pre­sen­ta­tion titled “Why the Edu­ca­tion Sys­tem Sucks”, which was about the dif­fer­ence between inter­est and pas­sion, and how the edu­ca­tion sys­tem needs a rev­o­lu­tion to nur­ture the latter.

It was a great end to a fan­tas­tic expe­ri­ence. I intend to stay in touch with my appren­tices, and I look for­ward to read­ing and hear­ing more of their work.

Thanks, ACI, for this oppor­tu­ni­ty. And thanks, Becky and Tan­ner, for being great appren­tices, or men­tal­ists, or man­a­tees, or what­ev­er the right word is.