Minotaur Books
July 16, 2924
Trouble in Queenstown by Delia Pitts blends grief, class, race, and family within a murder mystery. This small-town suspense story has lies, dirty politics, and corruption.
“I thought for many years how I would write a story in this genre. I also thought about a cousin and friend of mine, Esther Myricks, who I grew up in Chicago. She is several years older than me. I always admired her spirit, grit, and inventiveness during the 1960s and 1970s from an African American woman. She started with her husband a small security agency on the Southside of Chicago. It filled a gap for the neighbors in the community. Her agency was the model and inspiration for the character and the setting in the book, but I added the murders. I just changed the one letter in the last name of my character to give her a shout out.”
The main character, Vandy Myrick, left the police force to become a private investigator, returning to her childhood hometown of Queenstown, New Jersey. A new client, Leo Hannah, the nephew of the mayor hires her to tail his wife, thinking she is having an affair. When she arrives at his home to deliver her report, she finds a bloody crime scene where two people were murdered and sets out to investigate what really happened. She realizes that there is a web of deceit surrounding a racially charged murder with deep ties to the town’s most influential family. Per usual, with small town stories where one family is the nemesis, Vandy finds herself the target of an assault with her family 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.
“Vandy is a private investigator who returned to the small town. She had a catastrophic event that disrupted her life. She has very resilient relationships with her strong women friends. She is very self-aware, sarcastic, literate, and tough. She takes no guff from anybody. I hope readers root for her. She is influenced by her dad, a former policeman. He was the most important person in her life growing up, a daddy’s girl. She became a police officer because of him. She left the police force and became a PI after her personal tragedy.”
This double murder has many twists and turns. The main character, Vandy, is likeable and someone readers will root for.
