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.

Sara Gran is the author of three stand-alone novels, published in over a dozen countries, and has had her work published in the Believer, the New York Times and the New Orleans Times Picayune. Born in Brooklyn in 1971, she lived there until 2004 before moving to New Orleans. She currently lives in California.