New Orleans, and Vic Willing, Assistant District Attorney for the prosecutors office, has been missing since Hurricane Katrina hit. Called in from San Francisco is Claire DeWitt, a detective whose expertise and methods derive from some unique sources. What Claire discovers takes us into the heart of the crime-ravaged, deeply wounded city, where those who can afford it live behind fences and those who can t are slain daily on the streets. And it s there she discovers that the only thing worse than an unsolved case, maybe, is a solved one.From the acclaimed author of Dope and Come Closer, City of the Dead is the first novel of a detective series unlike any you have read before, one that is sure to inspire a passionate and devoted following. Only a writer with a life as unusual as Sara Gran s - she was in New York City on 9/11/2001 and evacuated from her home in New Orleans on 8/29/2005 - could have written such an extraordinary look at modern-day New Orleans.