Publication Date: August 13, 2024
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 f
Clementine Baldwin is called in to find the real killer of Lewis “Turnip” Coogan in Meridian, Mississippi, in The Queen City Detective Agency by Snowden Wright.
Clementine “Clem” Baldwin is a former cop turned PI. Working with her partner Dixon, she is called in to investigate the death of Lewis “Turnip” Coogan by his mother. What seems like an open and shut case becomes a deep dive into the seedy underbelly of Meridian. With Clem’s life in danger, she must find the real killer while dealing with her own past.
Following a story featuring a black woman as the lead character was fascinating, especially for a book set in the 80s. Clem was a fun character to follow, and I liked her dynamic with Dixon. While the story was well written, I found the story convoluted and, at times, a little hard to follow. Rather than following a mob angle, however, I wish the author would have introduced more regarding racial tensions in the South in the 1980s. I feel that would have made for a much more compelling story and a better connection to Clem herself.
The Queen City Detective Agency is a good retro-read reminiscent of classic mob movies of the era.
Born and raised in Mississippi, Snowden Wright is the author of American Pop, a Wall Street Journal WSJ+ Book of the Month and NPR Best Book of the Year. He has written for The Atlantic, Salon, Esquire, The Millions, and the New York Daily News, among other publications, and previously worked as a fiction reader at The New Yorker, Esquire, and The Paris Review. Wright was a Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellow at the Carson McCullers Center, and his small-press debut, Play Pretty Blues, received the Summer Literary Seminar’s Graywolf Prize. He lives in Yazoo County, Mississippi.
