The Infinite Blacktop, Sara Gran
The Infinite Blacktop, Sara Gran
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The Infinite Blacktop

Author: Sara Gran

Narrator: Madeleine Maby

Unabridged: 9 hr 16 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/18/2018


Synopsis

Named one of the best books of 2018 by NPR

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?

About Sara Gran

Sara Gran is the author of Saturn’s Return to New York, Come Closer, Dope, as well as two previous novels featuring Claire DeWitt. Her work has been published in more than a dozen countries. Born in Brooklyn, Sara lived in New York City until 2004. She now lives in Los Angeles and has a successful career writing for television.


Reviews

Goodreads review by James

The Infinite Blacktop is the third novel in Sara Gran's series featuring Claire DeWitt, The World's Greatest Detective, and it's another excellent read. DeWitt is, by almost any standard, the most unique protagonist in modern crime fiction, and it's virtually impossible to adequately capture the dep......more

Goodreads review by Paul

If I could give this book 10 stars, I would. So intelligent, enchanting. TIB is full of manic, dangerous energy reminding me why I became a reader in the first place.......more


Quotes

"Claire DeWitt is a private eye like no other, and narrator Madeleine Maby embraces her feisty personality. Three subplots covering three time frames make up DeWitt's latest story. In the present, someone has just tried to kill her and may try again. In flashbacks to her childhood, listeners learn how she came to be a detective. And in the middle, linking the two, DeWitt solves the murder of an artist in 1990s Los Angeles. All the strands fascinate, and DeWitt is a marvelous blend of detectives from classic fiction and from comic books. Maby ensures that this is a great listen as long as disbelief is totally suspended."