Only two books into what one hopes will become a lengthy series, Sara Gran (a longtime bookseller at NYC’s The Strand) achieves a great feat in creating an authentic new voice for an old genre. Her detective, Claire DeWitt, is contemporary and soulful, a gender-queer seeker of truth and defender of innocents whose tragic adolescence as a Lower East Side punk leads her to stumble eventually into training in a mystic cult of philosophical detectives. The vivid, purposeful settings explore a contemporary American experience, ranging from the desolation of post-Katrina New Orleans to the secretive, privileged power-brokering of the Bohemian Club in Marin County, California, and both books come with killer soundtracks and crisp, sly writing. You won’t want them to end. You’ll wait impatiently for the next one.