The Queen City Detective Agency
A Novel
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3.7 • 7 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Following an unforgettable cast of characters and a jaded female P.I. enmeshed in a criminal conspiracy in 1980s Mississippi, The Queen City Detective Agency is a riveting, razor-sharp Southern noir that unravels the greed, corruption, and racism at the heart of the American Dream.
Meridian, Mississippi—once known as the Queen City for its status in the state—has lost much of its royal bearing by 1985. Overshadowed by more prosperous cities such as New Orleans and Atlanta, Meridian attracts less-than-legitimate businesses, including those enforced by the near-mythical Dixie Mafia. The city’s powerbrokers, wealthy white Southerners clinging to their privilege, resent any attempt at change to the old order.
Real-estate developer Randall Hubbard took advantage of Meridian’s economic decline by opening strip malls that catered to low-income families in Black neighborhoods—until he wound up at the business end of a .38 Special. Then a Dixie Mafia affiliate named Lewis “Turnip” Coogan, who claims Hubbard’s wife hired him for the hit, dies under suspicious circumstances while in custody for the murder.
Ex-cop turned private investigator Clementine Baldwin is hired by Coogan’s bereaved mother to find her son’s killer. A woman struggling with her own history growing up in Mississippi, Clem braves the Queen City’s corridors of crime as she digs into the case, opening wounds long forgotten. She soon finds herself in the crosshairs of powerful and dangerous people who manipulate the law for their own ends—and will kill anyone who threatens to reveal their secrets.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A biracial PI unearths political corruption in this witty and insightful mystery from Wright (American Pop). In 1985 Meridian, Miss., Clementine "Clem" Baldwin and her associate, Dixon Hicks, are approached by Lenora Coogan, whose son, Turnip, has died trying to escape from the county jail where he was being held for the murder of real estate developer Randall Hubbard. Though witnesses saw Turnip fall off the jail's roof, Lenora is convinced he was murdered; she also believes he was wrongly imprisoned, despite strong evidence that he carried out the hit on behalf of Hubbard's wife. Lenora's case is thin, but Clem and Dixon take it anyway, heading to the mansions of Hubbard's associates and the trailer parks of Turnip's peers as they slowly unravel a deadly conspiracy being perpetrated by the Dixie Mafia, whose members sit in the highest ranks of local government. Wright elevates his premise with wry humor ("Meridian, Mississippi... billed itself as the state's ‘Queen City,' but had, in recent decades, become more of a countess or a baronet") and a keen awareness of the South's racial dynamics. This has series potential.
