Sara Gran

Claire DeWitt, the hard-living and tough-talking private investigator, has always been something of a detective. As a young girl growing up in Brooklyn, Claire and her two best friends, Tracy and Kelly, fell under the spell of the book Detection by legendary French detective Jacques Silette. The three solved many cases together and were inseparable--until the day Tracy vanished without a trace. That is still the only case Claire ever failed to solve....

A recurrent, unidentifiable noise in her apartment. A memo to her boss that's replaced by obscene insults. Amanda-a successful architect in a happy marriage-finds her life going off kilter by degrees. She starts smoking again, and one night for no reason, without even the knowledge that she's doing it, she burns her husband with a cigarette. At night she dreams of a beautiful woman with pointed teeth on the shore of a blood-red sea.