Every editing process has its periods of grind and periods of slack: times when the prose sharpens with every keystroke, and times when the entire mass must be left to ferment.

In a fermentation period this last weekend, I picked up Sara Gran’s new book, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead; I’m a few chapters in and finding it wonderful.  Hints of Dirk Gently, the Three Investigators, Philip Marlowe, and Haruki Murakami’s nameless protagonists – somehow they all meld into a book that (so far) is intense, inviting, and subtle.  I’m even sensing some of Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy concern with the universe as a detective problem – but Gran communicates this concern by writing a compelling story with compelling characters, rather than a freshman-year philosophy class rumination.  Exciting to pick up a new book, by an author I don’t know, and find myself infatuated on page 20.