![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/queen2.jpg\")
<\/a>It\u2019s 1985 in Meridian, Mississippi. It\u2019s the Ronald Reagan era, morning in America, so they say. But in Meridian, once known as the Queen City but now more of a dump, there\u2019s often more darkness than dawn, especially for the city\u2019s Black people, and poor people, and anybody who\u2019s not in the good graces of the corrupt rich white men who run things.<\/p>\nClementine \u2013 Clem to those who know her \u2013 Baldwin is a former Meridian cop who started her own private detective agency after getting disillusioned with the police department. She\u2019s also the daughter of a Black mother and a white father, although whenever people see her for the first time, all they see is the Black part, and she\u2019s OK with that.<\/p>\n
In one of the many ironies of this well written mystery novel, Clem\u2019s white father is in prison. Her mother died giving birth to her, so Clem was largely raised by her father, except when he mysteriously had to be \u201caway\u201d and left her with Black relatives.<\/p>\n
Even though having a white father gave her some advantages as she was growing up, she\u2019s thoroughly disgusted with him, filled with resentment and anger.<\/p>\n
Clem and her partner, Dixon Hicks, are hired to investigate the death of Lewis \u201cTurnip\u201d Coogan. Coogan died under mysterious \u2013 read that really odd \u00a0\u2013 circumstances while botching an attempt to escape from the Meridian jail, where he\u2019s being held for the murder of Randall Hubbard, a wealthy real-estate developer who was becoming wealthier by developing strip malls in Black neighborhoods. It seems Turnip, who\u2019s not especially bright, sometimes works for the Dixie Mafia, and he claims Hubbard\u2019s young wife hired him to take out her husband \u2013 but that he didn\u2019t do it. He was set up, he says.<\/p>\n
Turnip\u2019s mother thinks her son was murdered, and she wants Clem to find \u201dthe sons of bitches who killed him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clem has no idea what she and Dixon are really getting into, but she soon begins to suspect that the murders of Turnip Coogan and Randall Hubbard are entwined with Meridian\u2019s complicated underworld.<\/p>\n
She also begins to realize that as she and Dixon probe more deeply into what\u2019s been going on, they are putting themselves in danger. Clearly, there are people in Meridian who will go to any lengths, including murder, to keep their activities from being exposed. Too often, these people are in league with \u2013 or maybe are \u2013 those with power and position.<\/p>\n
Clem is a complex, troubled person. She drinks too much and struggles with what she\u2019s had to put up with living her life as a mixed-race Black girl, then woman, in 1980s Mississippi.<\/p>\n
Somehow, though \u2013 and this is part of Snowden Wright\u2019s genius \u2013 this novel isn\u2019t as overwhelmingly dark as it sounds. There\u2019s plenty of humor, including from the relationship between Clem and Dixon. He\u2019s a blond, good-looking former local football star and Vietnam veteran with a loving young wife. Clem thought he was dumb as a post and hired him largely so that his white good looks and charm could accomplish what might be tough if not impossible for a Black woman PI \u2013 sort of the reverse of the stereotypical dumb blonde woman. Only, she soon learns, Dixon isn\u2019t so dumb, and he\u2019s also open to learning new things, including her perspectives on life in Meridian.<\/p>\n
There are also a number of touching moments and insights that show some of the better sides of human nature,<\/p>\n
\u00a0Further proof of Wright\u2019s genius is the way he, a white man, writes so convincingly, apparently easily, about a Black woman protagonist. He is a native Mississippian, and maybe that\u2019s more important. He gets it.<\/p>\n
The Queen City Detective Agency<\/em> also offers plenty of twists on familiar racial stereotypes, starting with Dixon\u2019s obvious shock when he and Clem visit her father in prison to pick his brain about their case. Dixon knew Clem\u2019s father was a convict, but he had no clue that the man was white.<\/p>\n Who\u2019s really behind the murders in Meridian? How deep does the corruption go? Is the Dixie Mafia real? Is it the reincarnation of the Ku Klux Klan, repackaged for the 1980s?<\/p>\n Read the book and ride along with Clem and Dixon as they unravel the truth.<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson THE QUEEN CITY DETECTIVE AGENCY. By Snowden Wright. William Morrow. 260 pages. It\u2019s 1985 in Meridian, Mississippi. It\u2019s the Ronald Reagan era, morning in America, so they say. But in Meridian, once known as the Queen City but now more of a dump, there\u2019s often more darkness than dawn, especially […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1356,590,5,4,14],"tags":[1407,1408,88,1409],"class_list":["post-3252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-fiction","category-detective-fiction-mysteries","category-mysteries","category-southern-fiction","category-thriller-suspense","tag-mystery-fiction","tag-snowden-wright","tag-southern-fiction-2","tag-the-queen-city-detective-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3252"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3255,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3252\/revisions\/3255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}