The case should have been simple: follow a wife and make sure that she’s not being followed by a stalker or not meeting a lover. When the wife ends up dead, Vandy ends up with too many clients wanting to know who killed her.

I picked this book without having a clue what it was about because of the cover. Unfortunately, the cover artist isn’t acknowledged in the book so I can’t give credit to them. This shot of a diner, that doesn’t really feature in the main storyline, is a flashback to good times. It tells its own tale. It says, “Come in, come in. I gotta story for you. Let me pour you a cuppa and do you want some pie with that?”

Trouble in Queenstown is an interesting introduction to the Vandy Myrick series. We get to meet the foundation of Vandy’s world for the first time and it’s complicated. Vandy says she’s straight forward with no strings, but the girl’s messy as heck.😆 She also talks a good game, but has none which unfortunately for her, she is shown multiple times throughout the story. It does make for great reading.

Everyone will know who the killer is right from the start. The problem is how is Vandy going to get the proof because everyone wants her stopped. Then there are the complications she brings on herself. I will say that Delia Pitts knows how to put a twist on a story that even I didn’t predict and I’ve gotten pretty good at seeing a plot twist (Lifetime movie aficionado here).

The cast is diverse. There is an open discourse on racism and how it affects generations and people living in the present. There may be some triggers for people as the death of a child is discussed in detail.The grief of the loss is spoken about from three different parents who have lost children.

Vandy Myrick has a lot to learn and she’s aware of it. It will be interesting to see where she goes from here and I can’t wait to see her grow into her own. Trouble in Queenstown is off to a great start as I didn’t even guess the twist and that’s the best kind of mystery.

I have never read any of this author's book. When I stumbled across this one, I thought why not? I quite enjoy a hard-boiled detective story.

I jumped right into this one head first. I can't say I'm disappointed that I did. I mostly enjoyed this book. There is a lot of complexity to the main character and her dealing with those in her hometown. The story itself depended on those complexities, which helped keep the story moving and the plot together.

At the same time though, some of the complexities also gave me a few sighs and earned a few eyerolls. I tend to shy away from stories that are deeply rooted in social justice plots. While the plot isn't necessarily rooted in social justice, it's heavily connected to a few. I like to read to escape those things since they are around us everywhere we turn. This is just a personal preference, but for me, it made the read a little less enjoyable. (I can appreciate they exist for a purpose in this book though.)

Overall, this is definitely worth a read if you want a strong female character and a solid mystery.

This might be my favorite book about a private detective yet. The author does a great job of creating a realistic world and characters worth reading more about.

This sounded like a good fit for me, but this one didn’t hit. There were too many cases that Vandy was trying to solve, and I didn’t really buy into the secrets about Vandy’s family. I don’t I made it halfway and then got less and less invested. The story moved slowly and just didn’t pull me in. I won’t continue this series.

i really enjoyed this book! the cast of characters was fun and the commentary was sharp and clear. the mystery was well constructed—the perpetrator is never in question, but the why is, and it was very compelling.

This was my first time reading a book by this author, and while I was curious to try something new, I just couldn’t totally get into the plot. The story felt slow to me, and I found myself getting distracted pretty easily while reading. I think part of it might be that vintage like mystery stories just aren’t really my thing. I had a hard time staying engaged.

That said, I did appreciate the parts of the book that touched on class and race. Those themes felt more grounded and interesting, and I wish there had been more focus on that side of the story. Overall, it wasn’t a bad read, just not something that fully clicked for me.

First in the series, and I was excited to get to know the main character Vandy Myrick. She's got a deeper story within her that I enjoyed reading about. Moving back to the fictional Queenstown to be a PI makes me giddy to get into mysteries in a small town like this. And the author did not disappoint, but it just didn't jump out so much at me to rise above other thrillers.

Mind you, this had its fun parts and crazy parts. The author knew how to stir things up. She also was great at writing Vandy, but I longed for more and more juice to the story. The depictions of many things were done well, but it just stayed middle ground for me. But I do look forward for the next book to amp up everything surrounding Queenstown.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

This book has a tough private investigator who is smart and strong. The story has lots of twists and turns that keep you guessing. The main character is well-developed, and it’s easy to root for her. The mystery is exciting, and the writing keeps you hooked. Since this is the first book in a series, I’m excited to see what happens next! If you like mystery stories with a great female lead, this is a book you should read.

"Trouble in Queenstown". I never read anything by Delia Pitts. It's a very long, tough mystery after mystery in this book. Vandy Myrick Is one tough cookie as a private I. She has guts and toughness in a crazy world. Trying to find all the clues and creating one big mess after another is tough, but she figures it all out.

I didn't really like the cover as it didn't match the vibe of the book. I didn't like the ridicoulous made up name which really turned me off the book. Vandy is an unapologetically strong and flawed protagonist, but this was too noir and slow-burning for me.

In Trouble in Queenstown, Delia Pitts introduces private investigator Evander "Vandy" Myrick, who returns to her hometown in New Jersey after a personal tragedy ends her law enforcement career. Now working as a PI, Vandy is hired to follow a woman named Ivy. What starts as a routine job takes a turn when Ivy and another man are found dead, pulling Vandy into a tangled mess of secrets and power plays in her small town.
Vandy is an interesting lead—tough, determined, and dealing with her own struggles while trying to get to the truth. The mystery keeps things moving, and the small-town setting adds plenty of tension. The story touches on issues of race, class, and corruption, but it never feels heavy-handed.

Overall, Trouble in Queenstown is a solid start to a new series. A strong mystery, a great main character, and plenty of twists make it a read worth picking up. Looking forward to reading the next.

I received this Advanced Reader Copy of Trouble in Queenstown from Minotaur Books and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Vandy is hired to follow a man’s wife to find evidence for a divorce. She follows her for a week then hands him her report. Later she receives a call telling her to come to his house, his wife has been murdered. When Vandy looks at the pictures she took at the scene, she doesn’t believe the crime happened as he told the police. She maybe a small time P.I., but she also used to be a cop.
Goodreads

So looking this one up it must be intended to be the start of a series? Starring private investigator Vandy Myrick. Looking forward to what’s to come. Enjoyed that it took place in a “small” community of 9,000. Which I guess is small to most. But I’m from Iowa and a town of 3,200 lol so much smaller! We don’t have any need for PI’s here tho. Nothing that exciting happens!

Vandy, our main character, is a PI who returns to her hometown of Queenstown. What a mess, in a good way! This book is entertaining and witty. Definitely has TV series all over it! Thank you, Netgalley, for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review. 4 Stars

4/5 stars - I really enjoyed this one. the FMC is my absolute fave to read. She's such a badass. I love police procedurals but really haven't read many books from the perspective of a PI. I definitely want to read more of this type of book and will definitely be reading more from Delia Pitts.

Vandy recently became a PI. With this first case, she is hired to prove a woman is cheating on her husband. However, she shows up dead.
It is up to Vandy to figure out who killed her because the police think it is a case closed.
Opinion
I went through phases of loving this book and then thinking "really?" I feel like in some of the "interview" sessions, characters gave up too much information too quickly. The guilty party was not hard to guess because of this. I wish there were more "red herrings" but overall I was not too disappointed with the book.
Vandy's character certainly went through some growing pains but I ended up having a much higher opinion of her at the end. I can only assume that Pitts will grow as a writer and get better at hiding in the pertinent information.
I am a teacher and tend to be more forgiving that other reviewers but I really feel like Pitts has the beginning of a great series.
Many thanks to Net Galley and to St. Martin's Press for providing me with an ARC to this book.

This was such a great book. I don't read a lot of books from the perspective of private investigators, but this leads me to believe that I should. I will say, for a bit I was so confused about what was supposed to be happening in this story. It did end up coming around and making perfect sense, and I enjoyed the ride. Vandy was a badass female protagonist and I'm definitely going to pick up any future installments of this series!

Modern-day authors who choose to write private eye novels are inevitably forced to reckon with the well-developed tropes of the genre. Hard-drinking loners who aren’t afraid to fight when called upon, but frequently succumb to the charms of a femme fatale, used to be the norm, but hundreds of authors have subverted that description in the past 50 years. Add Delia Pitts to the list with her new sleuth, Vandy Myrick.

Vandy is sober, she doesn’t carry a gun, and perhaps most significantly, she is a Black woman. Her father, a retired cop now in a nursing home memory care unit, is her only family; her mother and daughter are both dead. Vandy has returned to Queenstown, her New Jersey hometown, to open her PI agency. Queenstown is one of those places you encounter a lot in hardboiled fiction: it’s a hotbed of corruption, racism, and nepotism, as it is primarily run by one powerful family, the Hannahs.

Leo Hannah, son of Queenstown’s longtime mayor, hires Vandy to follow his wife Ivy and find out if she’s cheating on him. Vandy surveils her for a week and doesn’t discover any damning evidence. When Ivy is murdered, it appears that a local man named Hector—who is conveniently dead himself—killed her, but Ivy’s father doesn’t believe it’s such an open-and-shut case, and wants Vandy to keep investigating. The Hannahs believe justice has been served, and it becomes clear that Vandy will make some powerful enemies if she continues looking into Ivy’s murder.

At one point, Vandy is severely beaten by some thugs who want her off the case, and as usual for these types of books (see also: V.I. Warshawski), she brushes herself off and gets right back to work. I don’t think any 49-year-old would recover that quickly—maybe not even someone half her age! This is one trope that I really wish would go away. Despite that, Vandy is a smart, tenacious addition to the roster of female hardboiled PIs.

A very interesting read. Thank you to the publisher for allowing me to read this book. It wasn't really for me, but I am sure that it will be loved by the right audience.

My first Delia Pitts book. I really enjoyed it. I loved the twists and turns throughout the book, and it kept me hooked. I can't wait to read more from this author!

Thank you to the author and publisher for the opportunity to read this book.