Look. I’ll be honest. I am not a fan of mystery. I just can’t get into it. For some reason, it always seems overly complicated to me. I’m more of a minimalism/essentialism fan and less of a gratuituous/unnecessarily anything fan. With that caveat, I will say I loved this book. I will read anything that comes out of Sara Gran’s pen/quill/typewriter/keyboard/whatever. She is the only person to date that has made me interested in a purely mystery genre novel.

Claire DeWitt, the world’s best private detective, has just woken up after someone has tried to murder her. The journey to discovery will lead her far into her past, take a detour through some of her own favorite detective stories growing up, through the disappearance of a childhood friend, and back to her own attempted murder once again.

This one was a wild ride. It’s a lot to keep up with, but I never lost the thread, which surprised me. I loved the foray into the world of the girl detective, and I feel like Gran really weaved the three timelines together nicely. I love her dialog, her prose, and her overall style. Plus, the characterization is always on point. I’d follow Claire DeWitt anywhere.

It’s out. It’s been out. I’m just way behind on most everything these days. I have a hard time mustering enough care for much of anything, but there are so many good books in the world, and I want to read them all. If you’re looking for a good one for your TBR, consider this. Also, if you understated and unnerving horror, check out Come Closer. It’s the book that got me hooked on Gran’s writing.

I struggled mightily through half of this book, before giving up. This will be my first time giving up on a Sara Gran novel. Usually, her stories and deeply flawed characters suck me right in, but it just didn't happen this time. There were some bright spots, but not enough to keep me reading.

Sara Gran has published two previous novels featuring “the world’s best private detective" Claire DeWitt, and The Infinite Blacktop is the third in the series. Not having read the first two, I was concerned I might be lost when I read it, having received an advance copy from Atria Books and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

The story opens with Clare waking up in an ambulance in Oakland. She was in a car crash (her car was T-boned – yikes) and rather than being an accident, someone has apparently tried to murder her. This leads her on a journey to Las Vegas and the surrounding desert, and along the way she has to explore previous times in her life, looking at friends she has lost, childhood obsessions, other detectives she has known, etc.

There are three intertwining stories, in three different time periods. These explore Claire’s early career in Brooklyn, her time in Los Angeles in the late 1990s where she fled following the death of her mentor in New Orleans, and her current exploration of the clues to find the current would-be assassin.

The stories start to come into focus, and the truth starts to become clear. At this point, I was hoping to really care about Claire and her current dilemma, but TBH, I never really did. I think possibly I’m just not part of the target audience, and I am sure many people will love this…but it just didn’t work for me. Three stars.

This is a third in a series book adventure with Claire DeWitt, the self professed greatest detective in the world and her case ' The Infinite Blacktop '. Claire DeWitt is one of the few, possibly only, detectives left alive who is trained in the art of detection by the book ( bible to Claire) written by French detective, Jacques Sillette. This tale of rollicking, action (and occasional forced meditation) begins when Claire is t- boned in a car crash which was no accident. Trying to find out why she was targeted, her investigation begins from there in an occasional ( well ok, pretty much continual) self drugged state, trying to find her almost killer. Author Sara Gran imbues Claire with a sardonic wit and a sense of destiny that she must solve the case. This intensifies when Claire discovers possible leads to resolving mysterious happenings tat possibly will allow her to solve her only unsolved case. She follows these leads despite personal danger because Claire DeWitt always solves the case, well, except for one. This book was a great fun, page turning continuation of her earlier, outside the lines, Claire DeWitt books. Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for the ARC copy.

Synopsis/blurb....

The "delicious and addictive" (Salon) Claire DeWitt series returns with a thrilling, noirish knockout of a novel that follows three separate narratives starring the self-proclaimed "world's greatest detective." As Cara Hoffman, author of Running, says, this "is a hard-boiled, existential masterpiece."

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?

Complicated, enthralling and a little bit head-scratching at the finale, which far from marring my enjoyment of this book, just has me thinking about it at odd moments ever since I've finished it. I'm tempted to re-read the last dozen or so pages to try and enlighten myself, or maybe not, maybe it will come to me at an odd moment of reflection.

The Infinite Blacktop is the third Claire DeWitt series book, but worked well enough for me on its own. I do have the first on the shelves somewhere (City of the Dead) which I'll get to one day, which will then give a better indication of whether to pony up for the second.

Claire is a PI and the self proclaimed best detective in the world and someone just tried to kill her with a car. We endeavour to discover who and why. We get the who in the end and Claire gets the why, me I'm still figuring it all out.

The journey to that point is bloody marvellous though, as several other cases and timelines are woven into the mystery. There's a Los Angeles cold case in the late 90s - the death of an artist which Claire works to gain the hours for her Californian PI license and there is the more personal mystery of the disappearance of one of Claire's teenage friends, back in New York when they were young adolescents sucked into the world of solving mysteries because of the teenage detective Cynthia Silverton magazine. Best friend, Tracy vanished without a trace and Claire's world has never been quite the same since.

Along the way, we discover the rivalries in the world of detection and the differing schools of approach to solving a mystery. Jacques Silette's great book Detection, discovered in the attic of her parent's house offering DeWitt her inspiration and direction. There's also the labelling of all the cases she has involvement in - The Case of the Curse of the White Pearl of the Tomb of the Lost Golden Lotus, The Case of Broken Lily etc etc. I'm still trying to recall what the labelling reminds me of.

DeWitt is an incredible character and a contradiction - on the surface, she's tough, capable, violent, irrational, destructive, intelligent; whilst at the same time lonely, vulnerable, afraid. We keenly feel her ongoing grief at the loss of her mentor,Constance Darling best friend and maybe lover. She's compelling reading. And I'm not going to disagree, she may be the best detective in the world.

Lots to enjoy here, the landscape of LA - in the late 90s and our present day Oakland (ok 2011); the flip-flopping timelines and tales. I was so totally immersed in the investigation into the death of the LA artist that I was kind of sad to be dragged back to Oakland and another spell trying to get closer to the present day mystery of who was trying to kill our heroine. Then in turn I was mesmerised by the Las Vegas scenes and the unravelling of the origins of the Cynthia Magazine, a key factor in two of our puzzles.

Quirky, off-beat, unusual and enthralling. I liked this a lot more than I kind of expected to.

4.5 from 5

Sara Gran has published five previous novels - three standalones including Come Closer and Dope and three Claire DeWitt mysteries. She's an author I'll definitely read more from in the future.

Read in October, 2018
Published - 2018
Page count - 220
Source - Net Galley early reviewer's site
Format - ePub file read on laptop.

https://col2910.blogspot.com/2018/10/sara-gran-infinite-blacktop-2018.html

I did not connect with this book at all, i am sorry to say. So as i know how important reviews are for authors i have not put my review on the sites i use. I liked the blurb of the book but upon reading it i could not connect with the characters or writing and i ended up not finishing the book. I always feel disappointed when i cannot finish a book, not with the author but with myself more, i must say i prefer the black and white cover here on netgalley compared with the cover i saw on amazon uk site.

Published by Atria Books on September 18, 2018

The title of this novel is not Claire DeWitt and the Case of the Infinite Blacktop, but it is a Claire DeWitt novel, notwithstanding the departure from the tradition Sara Gran established when she titled the first two Clare DeWitt novels. Claire DeWitt novels are noir with some bright splashes of paint that occasionally relieve the darkness, but there is still plenty of bleakness for noir fans. The title, for example: “Experience was just a long, infinite, blacktop of things you’d regret not enjoying later.” Or: “There is no escape from the pain of other people. They would ruin you and you would ruin them.” That’s dark.

The novel begins with Claire on the ground and bleeding, the victim of an attempted murder by car. Everyone in LA, Claire is told, suffers a death by car. Now she only needs to figure out who tried to kill her and why. She also needs to survive the killer’s next attempt.

The story alternates the past with the present. The past is 1999, when Claire was investigating the unsolved mystery of an artist’s death. Yes, he died in a car accident — but was it an accident? The 1999 story takes Claire into the art world, where the road to success requires artists to become commercial, while the road to respect (from other serious artists, at least) dooms an artist to poverty. The immensely talented dead artist, Merritt, was the friend of a less talented but successful artist, Ann, who is also dead (yes, she died in a car accident — but). Claire noses around LA artists (an interesting if sometimes appalling group) and digs up facts about the fates of both artists, all in an effort to log enough hours to earn her California PI license.

The present is 2011. Claire is trying to figure out who tried to run her down with a car. The answer, of course, ties into the 1999 mystery. It also ties into a “girl detective” magazine that, like an obscure book about crime investigation by a French detective, influenced her life.

Good fiction is often a self-help book with a plot. Claire is going through some difficult emotional times in 1999 and another character gives her some comforting words about accepting the inevitability of change and pain — comforting not because the thoughts are particularly original, but because they are expressed in an original way. But advice is one thing and internalizing it is another, so Claire is still a bit of a mess. That’s what makes her real.

Speaking of plots — The Infinite Blacktop tells a strange story, but its strangeness is part of its appeal. Some of the story is told indirectly in the final unpublished girl detective story, a story that encourages the girl detective to solve the biggest mystery of all: Who am I?

During most of The Infinite Blacktop I was wondering “Where is this going?” but by the end, I didn’t care. Plausibility isn’t a factor in a story like this; it’s enough that the plot hangs together and gives the characters a platform for exorcising their demons, or at least a chance to learn that they are made of more than the demons who have been driving their lives. This is a serious story about being afraid to die and afraid to live, even if some plot elements can’t quite be taken seriously, but it is also an entertaining story. Of the always-odd Sara Gran novels I’ve read, The Infinite Blacktop is my favorite.

RECOMMENDED

When she comes too, in pain and with someone's screams ringing in her ear, Claire DeWitt can't remember where she is or how she got there. Opening her eyes, she sees an ambulance and knows she's on a stretcher about to be taken to hospital. She also knows that, if she goes, she might not make it through the day alive. So she attacks a police officer, steals a car and heads out to figure out just who was trying to kill her and why.
It's a journey that takes her from her base in San Francisco to Las Vegas as she tracks down a man with white hair she isn't sure exists. Along the way she reflects on how she ended up as a private investigator, flashing back to her teenage years where she was obsessed with the Cynthia Silverton Detective series, as were her friends, who formed an unlikely trio of investigators through to how she got her private investigators license by figuring out who was dead and who wasn't as part of a cold case. It all seems completed unrelated but it isn't - things never are when it comes to crime fiction - and slowly the links become obvious, to Claire and you as the reader. By the time I got there, though, it all felt a bit secondary because I was having such a good time, bouncing back and forth in time and picking up clues as to just what made Claire, Claire.

If I was going to be a private investigator, I'd want to be Claire DeWitt, one of my favourite detectives even though she's only featured in three books and they have come at so slow a pace I've worried after each one there would never be another. How to describe Claire without making her unlikeable? I'm not sure there is a way. She has so many character traits that make me want to reach into the pages and give her a good shake but, all the same, I've fallen slightly in love with her. She's a tattoo covered, drug taking, beast who does what she needs to to solve the crime she's investigating, even if that means pissing people off and putting herself in danger.
She calls the crimes mysteries, which I love and gives each of them a name like The Case of the Bird with Broken Wings which evoke such images in my head, I long to know just what happened. Unfortunately, I probably never will. What I will have to do is - no doubt - wait for another seemingly endless time for another Claire DeWitt mystery. I have no doubt, though, it will be worth it!

"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 a 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 quote included was taken from an advanced readers copy and is subject to change upon publication.

3.5 for parts of this fast-paced mystery. I love tough female detectives and this did not disappoint. I got a little confused by the story in the story, but this was a fun read...Chandler meets Grafton meets Vachss. I’ll be reading more of this series!

Claire DeWitt is the self-proclaimed World’s Greatest Detective. As a young girl growing up in Brooklyn, Claire and her two friends, Tracy and Kelly, were inspired by Jacques Silette’s Detection and Cynthia Silverton, a teenage detective sensation. The three girls were inseparable and solved many cases until one-day when Tracy vanished without a trace. The one case that Claire and Kelly could never solve.

Claire is on her way to Las Vegas from San Francisco when she’s almost killed by a homicidal driver. With bruising and other injuries all over her body, Clare escapes from the accident scene – she’s not convinced that it was ‘just an accident.’ As she tries to solve the case behind the ‘accident’, she realizes that her P.I. license is not valid in the state of California. So, to make up for the remaining hours of work (to get a new license), she decides to work for Adam, a P.I. Adam gives her a cold case – the death of a renowned painter – Merritt Underwood.

Battered and bruised but strong, Claire decides to solve Merritt Underwood’s case. As she moves ahead, she reminisces her days with Constance Darling, the best detective in the World. Claire uncovers many secrets about Ann and Merritt. Along with the Merrit Underwood case, will Claire also solve the mystery behind Tracy’s disappearance?



Claire is constantly fighting the demons in her head – her addiction to narcotics, her relationship with Constance Darling, her childhood friends – Kelly and Tracy, Cynthia Silverton comics, and her search for truth – about life. The story was a cocktail of a whole lot of things – there was some good detective work, friendships, love, drugs and some really dark secrets.



Best detective or not, Claire’s one of a kind. Of all the detective stories that I have read so far, Claire was this one such character that I really tried hard to understand – it was more of a love-hate thing. I loved her detective skills – she can go to any extent, including pointing a gun, as long as she gets what she wants. And then, there was the other part of Claire – her life in general – the drugs, losing Constance and Tracy – heart-wrenching!



My favorite part of the book is the Claire solving the mystery behind Ann’s death. That was totally unexpected and WOW! The story is a mirror reflection of Claire’s mind – confused and lost, but, strong and dedicated. The mystery behind Tracy’s disappearance and Claire coming to terms with it at the end – not the kind of ending that I expected. There are some mysteries that can never be solved, especially when people disappear on their own will. Or, do they disappear on their own will, never to be found again?



I like it when I can totally connect or relate to the characters and the story. This book was an exception. I couldn’t connect to the story or the character much, but there was something about this story that kept me hooked on till the end.

I’m pretty sure Claire DeWitt is my spirit animal…without the drug abuse and self-destructive behavior, of course.

I’m not even going to try and get out of this one. I knew I needed to read this book just based on that cover. I mean…wow!! If that doesn’t catch your eye I don’t know what will. I was hoping that the gorgeous cover would be an excellent fit for the book and I was not disappointed. I devoured this!!

Now, I’m not a big reader of mysteries or detective novels. I mean, I read Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys growing up but it sort of ended there for me so I was a bit unsure what to expect. Claire Dewitt is a different sort of character and I was immediately drawn to her as a lead with a troubled past, a concerning present and a promising future. She also makes for one hell of an entertaining detective!

Going in, I wasn’t aware that The Infinite Blacktop was a part of a series and even though I didn’t feel like I was missing much by starting on the third book, I feel like I would have a much better understanding of Claire, her associates and her background in detective work if I would have read the first two books…which I fully plan to do and every book after. This was just so good. I didn’t even realize what I was missing by not reading more detective stories and I absolutely freaking LOVE that all the cases have those old detective story names. It just adds a little something extra awesome and was very nostalgic for me.

The author managed to keep me focused on the mystery at hand while also going back in time and working on a long unsolved mystery from Claire’s past simultaneously. This was brilliantly done and at no point did I get the cases confused or mix my facts. In fact, I found myself totally immersed in finding and following the clues to see if I could guess the outcome before Claire got there. I didn’t. I’d make a lousy detective but I really enjoyed the journey and had a lot of fun while reading this. I might just have to pick up some more detective novels and try my hand at a few more cases.

The Infinite Blacktop is a fast paced, dark, gritty and fun book that I would absolutely recommend to anyone whether you are a fan of the genre or not. I wasn’t…until now!

I would like to thank NetGalley and Atria Books for providing me with a copy of this book to read and review.

Intriguing noir thriller by Gran. Great writing and tying together of diverse plot lines. Worth the read

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.

Not being a regular reader of mysteries I picked up The Infinite Blacktop after reading a review for the book. No one beats Claire DeWitt she is the world's greatest detective (self-proclaimed). Her world is filled with cases like the Case of the Wilted Rose and the Case of the Emerald Peacock. It seems like a grown-up Nacy Drew world. Well, Nacy Drew who dated Cid Vicous. The book is a mix of gritty reality and childhood detective heroes.

I was going to say no one can write a mystery like Sara Gran, but really no one writes a BOOK like Sara Gran. She writes in our world, but with a fantastical tilt. Not magic, but just this side of it. Claire DeWitt is one of the best detectives in fiction today. My only complaint is that we have to wait so long between books. But if the result is something this tightly-written, then I'm willing to brave the long breaks.

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. 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.

This was my first Claire DeWitt and I loved it. I realize from reading other reviews that this reflects back on the two other novels. But I had no issues reading as a stand alone. This many of my favorite mystery elements: noir, wit, and smarts. I will absolutely pick up the first two books in this series post haste.

I am a huge fan of Sara Gran's character Claire. She's smart, savvy, off-beat and always questioning, questioning.
And this, from the cover says it all - "Claire, battered and bruised, continues her search for the answer to the biggest mystery of all: what is the purpose of our lives, and how can anyone survive in a world so clearly designed to break our hearts again and again?"

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.