ARC Review: Trouble in Queenstown by Delia Pitts

Trouble in Queenstown
Author: Delia Pitts
Publication: Minotaur Books (July 16, 2024)

Description: With Trouble in Queenstown, Delia Pitts introduces private investigator Vandy Myrick in a powerful mystery that blends grief, class, race, and family with thrilling results.

Evander “Vandy” Myrick became a cop to fulfill her father’s expectations. After her world cratered, she became a private eye to satisfy her own. Now she's back in Queenstown, New Jersey, her childhood home, in search of solace and recovery. It's a small community of nine thousand souls crammed into twelve square miles, fenced by cornfields, warehouses, pharma labs, and tract housing. As a Black woman, privacy is hard to come by in "Q-Town," and worth guarding.

For Vandy, that means working plenty of divorce cases. They’re nasty, lucrative, and fun in an unwholesome way. To keep the cash flowing and expand her local contacts, Vandy agrees to take on a new client, the mayor’s nephew, Leo Hannah. Leo wants Vandy to tail his wife to uncover evidence for a divorce suit.

At first the surveillance job seems routine, but Vandy soon realizes there’s trouble beneath the bland surface of the case when a racially charged murder with connections to the Hannah family rocks Q-Town. Fingers point. Clients appear. Opposition to the inquiry hardens. And Vandy’s sight lines begin to blur as her determination to uncover the truth deepens. She’s a minor league PI with few friends and no resources. Logic pegs her chances of solving the case between slim and hell no. But logic isn’t her strong suit. Vandy won’t back off.

My Thoughts: Vandy Myrick has come back to her hometown of Queenstown to open a business as a private investigator. She is home so that she can spend time with her father who is in a home and suffers from dementia. She is working with two friends, one of whom is a lawyer.

Most of Vandy's cases are simple and straightforward. When an influential local named Leo Hannah hires her to follow his wife, Vandy thinks it will be just another case but will give her entry into another group of potential clients. Vandy follows Ivy Hannah on her rounds for a week and is preparing a report for Leo when she gets a phone call. 

Someone has broken into the Myrick home and Leo shot and killed him. He claims that the home invader assaulted his wife who died on the operating table. Since Leo's aunt is the mayor, the investigation is quickly completed, and it lays all the blame on home invader Hector Ramirez and clears Leo of any culpability. 

But Vandy isn't so sure. Her years as a police officer show her another more likely scenario. And Ivy's father who wants custody of Ivy's 3-year-old son and Hector's teenage sister doesn't believe that her brother could have killed Ivy. 

Vandy begins her own investigation and finds herself the target of an assault herself and finds her father and friends also targeted. Someone doesn't want the truth to come out and is willing to go to all lengths to get Vandy to abandon her investigation. 

This was an engaging story. Vandy is an intriguing character who is dealing with her own grief after the death of her teenage daughter at a frat party. She has given up drinking and refuses to carry a gun, but she hasn't given up her reckless habit of one-night stands which is her substitution for intimacy. 

I enjoyed the story of this black woman who works in a town that was once a visible haven for the KKK. The racism is still pervasive though not quite as visible. 

I recommend this story for its great characters and fast-paced plot. 

Favorite Quote:

At fifteen, I answered a vital question: which side of the law would I be on? Both at once, if I could pull it off.

And I learned a vital lesson: which side would the law be on? Not mine, I knew for certain.

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.