This is a small town mystery. It is not fast moving and a wide variety of characters. Annie is back home from college and trying to figure out what she wants to do with the rest of her life. When one of her coworkers go missing she takes a job at her grandfather’s PI firm to investigate. There are many characters to keep track of and multiple plot lines that intersect. The story is also told from the characters point of view in the present and the past.

There was nothing about this book that really got me excited. The characters were uninteresting, the plot was unoriginal, and the writing just bothered me. I couldn't tell if the author was attempting to copy the style of the area (small town Texas) but it extended beyond the dialogue of the characters. I found myself several times rereading something trying to make some sense of it.

I considered putting it down more than once but something kept me going, so there's that. Bu I don't think this author is for me.

I want to thank #NetGalley and Minotaur Books for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Annie returns to her hometown after finishing college, not so sure as to where she wants to be or what she wants to do. She takes work at a local diner while trying to figure out what comes next. After attending a party out in the hills with her best friend, late one night, she learns that her co-worker Victoria has gone missing - and was last seen at the same party.

Annie persuades her grandfather Leroy to let her help him and his partner Mary Pat in their private investigation firm's inquiries into the crime. Leroy is an ex-Sheriff, with a reputation and an alcohol problem.

I liked Annie's character, and it felt authentic. The setting of the Texas hills added to the feeling of Annie drifting around too. The mystery didn't seem very complex, and I didn't feel very compelled to keep reading. I did finish the book, but it just didn't grab me.

After graduating from college, Annie has headed home to Texas, a place she thought she’d left behind, but she’s leery about taking the LSAT, and is at loose ends. Working in a diner probably isn’t her first choice, but at least it’s a job. When her coworker goes missing after being at a bonfire, Annie is regretful that she didn’t insist on giving her a ride. With fracking going on in their town, there’s some roughnecks hanging around. Annie’s crusty old Grandpa is Garnett’s retired sheriff and is now working as a private investigator with his partner, Mary-Pat. When asked to step in and help out with the investigation, Annie is eager to help out. Perhaps too eager at times. Will she find the niche she’s been searching for a, or are her Grandpa’s shoes too big to fill? Allen has a nice start to a series, although this book comes across a bit disjointed at times with the jump between past and present. The setting and family dynamics were well set up, but the story lagged at times and I figured out the ending long before reaching it.

I really don’t have much to say about Pay Dirt Road. The premise sounded interesting but, unfortunately was poorly executed. The characters were dull and boring and the plot was far from original. The story was also very predictable. Overall I found this one boring and forgettable.

This is the story of Annie, a young woman returning to her hometown in Texas after college. She gets a job as a waitress at the local cafe, working alongside Victoria, a single mom. When Annie finds out the day after a bonfire party (which Annie attended and saw Victoria there) that Victoria is missing, she becomes worried and decides to investigate.

Annie teams up with her grandfather, a former Sheriff, and his assistant Mary-Pat to investigate. Annie does not have great investigative skills but she perseveres.

The book was interesting, but I didn't find it completely engrossing. I thought the ending was good and I didn't figure out who it was until close to the end, although some readers may figure it out early on. I could, however, see this being written as a series as Annie hones her investigative skills.

Absorbing. I loved the small town atmosphere.
Many thanks to St. Martin’s Press and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

3.25/5⭐️

Annie McIntyre is a recent college graduate who has moved back home to the small town of Garnett, TX and is waitressing until she figures out her next move. Her “retired” grandfather, a PI, urges her into the business when a waitress friend ends up strangled to death on her family’s land. Between the dangers of investigating a murder, coming to grips with a hazy and disturbing memory from college and figuring out her future, she has her hands full.

No word if this might be the start of a series from this debut author, but it certainly reads like one. While the writing was fine, I felt parts of the narrative were jumpy and jerky, and at times I found myself feeling like I had missed out on some background material (especially in the beginning). There were also some questions that I felt weren’t answered sufficiently by the end, and I felt a disconnect with the characters.

So all-in-all just an “OK” for me.

My thanks to #NetGalley, #StMartinsPress and #MinotaurBooks for providing me the free early arc for review. The opinions are strictly my own.

PAY DIRT ROAD places a small town waitress, the granddaughter of a PI, at the heart of a murder mystery of a co-worker. As she single-mindedly pursues what happened to her co-worker, she slowly comes to terms with her own history, pieces of which she has ignored for too long. Author Samantha Jayne Allen has written a tale with plenty of small town intrigue and flavor; readers can feel the dust seep through words as they read. The ending suggests this may be a series and that sounds fine with me; there’s plenty of material left with the characters and the town to sustain more books. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Pay Dirt Road
Samantha Jayne Allen
April 19, 2022

Annie McIntyre finds herself back home in Garnett, Texas after graduating from college. Jobs are scarce so while she looks, she is waiting tables at the cafe working shifts while trying to find what to do with her life. She and her cousin Nikki live in an apartment. The town of Garnett has not really changed. There are those who work at oil and gas leases in the desert area. The townsfolk work the small backwater town. Summer is hot and humid. Nights find young adults having parties in the outskirts of farms. A keg and a bonfire entertain many partying the weekend nights.
Annie’s grandfather LeRoy was the county sheriff for years. Now retired he keeps up as a private eye working with an old friend, Mary-Pat Zimmerman at their investigation firm. Not much local business for them but here of late a local man had an accident that spun his car off the mountain. His death was questioned. Could someone have forced him off the road? It was quite the talk in the cafe. Still under inquiry by the department but it was thought to go down as an accident until another dubious homicide happened that summer.
Pay Dirt Road is set to be published on April 19, 2022 by Minotaur Books. I appreciate their allowing me to read and review Samantha Jayne Allen’s novel via NetGalley. It is an interesting suspense with a depth of conversation around Annie’s family and the local residents. At times there was almost too much information from her past as it made the plot hard to follow. I did get more involved once Part 1 of the book was completed. Do give this one a try - it’s well worth the effort by the conclusion.

After finishing college, Annie is back in her small Texas hometown unsure of what she should do next. Annie is working part-time in a restaurant and reconnecting with people from high school. When a fellow waitress is murdered, Annie gets involved with her grandfather's detective agency. Her parents and her cousin think that it's not a good idea. I received a free copy of this ebook from the publisher through Netgalley. This is my honest and voluntarily given review. In many ways, I think that this story is more about Annie trying to figure out her life than on the mystery. Annie stumbles around looking for clues. Also, something bad happened to Annie in high school when she visited a fraternity, and she isn't sure that she wants to know what happened. While I enjoy series in which you learn more about the character as well as solving a mystery, I don't really want to with Annie. I am the wrong audience for this book.

3.5 stars. An entertaining debut, and a quick read. However, it felt like the main character didn't solve the mystery so much as stumble across/come to a realization about the killer. I liked Annie, and her family. The author does a much better job with location - the evocative feeling of what it's like to live in a small, sometime suffocating, town.

"Annie McIntyre has a love/hate relationship with Garnett, Texas.

Recently graduated from college and home waitressing, lacking not in ambition but certainly in direction, Annie is lured into the family business—a private investigation firm—by her supposed-to-be-retired grandfather, Leroy, despite the rest of the clan’s misgivings.

When a waitress at the café goes missing, Annie and Leroy begin an investigation that leads them down rural routes and haunted byways, to noxious-smelling oil fields and to the glowing neon of local honky-tonks. As Annie works to uncover the truth she finds herself identifying with the victim in increasing, unsettling ways, and realizes she must confront her own past—failed romances, a disturbing experience she’d rather forget, and the trick mirror of nostalgia itself—if she wants to survive this homecoming."

Thanks to NetGalley for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review.

My Thoughts

Main character 24-year-old Annie McIntyre spends a lot of time in her head throughout this story, unfortunately it does not always help her see the truth soon enough.

This is layered reading, part past part present and a lot of setup before final reveals that give all the needed information to Annie as well as the story's reader.

Filled with small town drama and a lot of past history of certain residents in Garnett this particular crime mystery has some points to make concerning things outside what I expected it to contain.

Despite it’s apparent plot simplicity the book makes a few important statements and ends in a way that opens up the possibility of its main character maybe getting herself a series to follow along with.

EArc from Netgalley

On every book read as soon as it is done and written up for review it is posted on Goodreads and Netgalley, once released then posted on Amazon, Barnes and Nobles as well.

Pay Dirt Road, overall, was a disappointment. The blurb looked promising, but I struggled to stay engaged. Often, the main character would start down an investigative thread, then divert into a nostalgic remembrance that often felt random. Unfortunately, these interludes disrupted the reading experience more than enhanced it.

The writing fell flat too. There were a lot of dropped or missing articles that read as poor grammar. The author (I think) was trying to use regional speech patterns/dialect, but I couldn't tell for sure, and it didn't add interest.

Connecting with the characters was difficult. Some were promising, and just when I thought there would be more insight into motivation or personality, the author shifted topics, leaving me frustrated. Mary Pat, for example, was underdeveloped. Many (most?) of the lead characters were alcoholics or alcoholics in the making, and the amount of drunk driving amongst the "good guys" was too much for me. There was a lot of throwing back whiskies in red Solo cups and then hopping behind the wheel. Maybe this realistically depicts rural Texas? It seemed like the author was working on a mash-up of the old detective noir genre with millennial angst.

The mystery itself was unremarkable—bad oil guys, a lot of toxic masculinity, and no surprises.

I usually read a first-in-a-series mystery with some level of patience. It can take a few books to get the characters on track. So I'll usually read the next book before I bail, but I'll pass on the next in this series.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an electronic copy of the book in return for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this novel. I did feel as though the ending was a teeny bit rushed, which is why I give this book three and a half stars out of five. The elocution of detail within the story that Annie uses about the people and Garnett, Texas really hooked me. The details of the actual mystery left a little to be desired, so it wasn’t a fun read for me to try to figure out the who-dunnit part of the story. I also wish there was a little more to the environmental aspect of it. Overall, I did enjoy reading this novel and hope the author continues more with Annie in the future as I would love to read her solving more crimes with her grandfather’s partner.

Thank you to Netgalley and Minotaur for my copies of this in exchange for my honest opinion.

Annie McIntyre thought she was ready to leave Garret Texas in her rearview mirror when she went off to college, but the small town isn't done with her and she'll have to deal with the events she wanted to forget before she can decide where her future lies. Hopefully, it's not waitressing at the cafe, which she's doing to make ends meet, but maybe the part-time gig working for her grandfather's private investigation firm will turn something up.

Including the murderer of the waitress that went missing and turned up buried on Annie's grandfather's land. Of course, she's going to have to not get killed in the process.

Pay Dirt Road is Samantha Jayne Allen's debut novel, and winner of the Tony Hillerman Prize for Best First Mystery Set in the Southwest. Having grown up in a small Texas town herself, she reveals the passions and desperations of rural Texas life in sharp detail.

(Full review 4/1/22 http://www.gumshoereview.com/php/Review-id.php?id=6930)

Annie McIntyre has finished college with no clear direction, landing back in her small hometown of Garnett, Texas waiting tables at the local diner. Her sort-of retired lawman grandfather still dabbles in a PI firm and brings Annie into an investigation of a missing waitress. It isn’t long before the truth begins to reveal itself as Annie’s questions around town stir up shady environmental dealings and a disturbing personal experience for the unintentional new PI.

This story isn’t the gritty noir I expected but it certainly wasn’t a cozy mystery either. Pay Dirt Road is a promising debut with strong writing and I enjoyed this as a character study. That said, this story has been done time and again. As Annie’s past experience is revealed, I easily knew who the “big bad” was going to be and tie in to her investigation. The environmental issues that acted to further part of the plot felt unnecessary here and it’s been used before. The Texas oil fields and honky tonks are all tropes but here Samantha Jayne Allen managed to create an atmosphere that brought me right into the story and held my interest even as we headed toward the conclusion I’d already pieced together.

Thanks to Minotuar Books and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review. Pay Dirt Road is scheduled for release on April 19, 2022.

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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WHAT'S PAY DIRT ROAD ABOUT?
Annie just graduated from college and moves back to her hometown to decide her next move. That's the generous way to look at it, anyway, we'll get back to that in a bit. She's waiting tables at a local diner—well, the local diner in Garnett, TX. It's hard to say exactly how large Garnett is, but it's not big. But given the nearby oil fields, there's a lot of money as well as a lot of poverty in this smaller town.

Annie and her roommate/cousin spend a lot of their evenings drinking, frequently with others they graduated from high school with. One night they go to a bonfire at the home of one of Annie's former classmates and unexpectedly run into a co-worker, Victoria. Victoria has overserved herself at this point and doesn't show signs of slowing down. When Annie decides to leave, she tries to find Victoria but is told that she's gone off with someone.

That's the last anyone sees Victoria—the last anyone will admit to, anyway. Her body is found a few days later. Driven by guilt for abandoning her, Annie takes advantage of an offer from her grandfather—former sheriff, now a PI—to work for him and look into the case.

ANNIE
Annie is what many would call a deeply flawed character, but others would just say human. She's trapped by her own insecurities as well as ego. She knows she could likely do well in law school—but it would be hard and risky. She could probably talk herself into the challenge, but failing means losing hope she could get away from Garnett, and I don't think she's willing to do that.

Like so many people in similar circumstances, not knowing what to do, she drinks, so she doesn't have to think about it for a while. And drinks a lot. This wouldn't be a big deal for me as a reader, but Annie spends a lot of time judging her grandfather for his drinking—especially when they're supposed to be working. She doesn't say anything to him, she just keeps it inside and lets herself indulge. It's things like this that make her a wonderful, complex character.

THE SENSE OF PLACE
I'm vague on a lot about the town of Garnett (size, demographics, etc.), but I also have some concrete visions of certain parts of it. It reminds me a lot of the TV version of Dillon, Texas—which seemed to change size, economic status, and makeup from week to week, depending on what the story called for.

As I type that, I realize that my ideas about Garnett are basically half-Samantha Jayne Allen/half-Friday Night Lights. Annie would basically fit in with the Tyra Colletes and Tim Riggins of the world, not the Jason Streets and Lyla Garritys (although we get glimpses of that part of Garnett, too). I just thought of three paragraphs I could do paralleling the worlds of these two fictional towns, so I'd better move on before this becomes a very different kind of post.

What I kept getting was a feel for the town more than anything—it's the kind of place where the best and brightest leave after high school, and the big question is: will they come back? You get the impression that if they do, it's not because they chose to—they either have no choice, or it's just as a way station--like Annie intends. Some of those in the latter category end up sticking around, usually not by choice. This bleakness covers the whole of the novel—in the successes as well as the failures (and the in-between moments).

At the same time, it seems that few of these people are there by choice. It is their home. Up until two weeks before her death, Victoria had been tied to Garnett, but she had plans. Annie intends on leaving. But when it comes to the land of Garnett? Their families' acres? There's a reflexive, instinctive, and deep sense of possession and binding. Everyone knows that Annie's going to leave town at some point—but when there's a suggestion that someone is going to buy the land she's set to eventually inherit? That sets an emotional fire in her that I think surprised even her. You see something similar with Victoria, too. People like them may not like Garnett, may not want to live there but it's home. It's their home, and will be.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT PAY DIRT ROAD?
I don't know that I can say that I particularly enjoyed this book—by design, it's not a good time. But it's a great experience. Allen's sense of character and sense of place ensures that the reader feels what's going on. Particularly, but not limited to, Annie's experiences.

Like with any good mystery—and look at character—Pay Dirt Road is as much about the investigation as it is the history of the characters—for Annie, this goes back to High School, for her family, the history we see goes back far before that. The past illumines the present, and helps the reader—and eventually, Annie and others—to see what's going on in the present.

Last year, I finally got around to reading The Far Empty by J. Todd Scott. Garnett doesn't have the same kind of corruption (at least that we see) going on, but it has the sense of setting, of bleakness, and dedication to place/city/home. Between these two books—not to mention Locke's Bluebird, Bluebird and Kent's The Dime—I'm starting to think I should focus more of my Crime reading on the Lone Star State.

This could be the beginning of a series—and if it is, I'll be at the front of the line for the sequel. This could be a stand-alone, and if so, it leaves the characters in a good place—both in terms of closure and promise for the future. Either way, this is a book that's going to linger in the back of my mind for a while, and I think that'll be true for others.

This book was a bit rough starting out, but it does eventually get better and once you get going with it is pretty good. It is more of a character story than it is a murder mystery, but that ended up being ok too.

Annie is a likable enough character. She is young, just out of college, and a bit lost. She just moved home and is trying to figure out what to do with her life. She is also dealing with something that happened in her past, which this story deals with pretty well and does have a bearing on the mystery that is evolving. The journey that Annie takes to find herself is what will hold your attention, more than the murder mystery.

There are a lot of secondary characters, and some of them are even quirky and fun. Some of them could use a little more fleshing out, and some of their backstories were not explained as well as they might have been. I did like Annie’s grandfather, who is a gruff yet lovable soul.

The main issues I had with the book was the writing and the murder mysteries. There are actually two murders, but only one is of concern to Annie, and the secondary one was not really relevant to the main story, so I kept wondering why it was even there. The writing is a bit rough, there are some sections that are disjointed and clunky. The dialogue doesn’t always flow nicely either. There are glimpses of some beautiful writing though, especially the descriptions of the small town and the surrounding areas. The mystery was pretty standard and easily solvable, but it didn’t need to be. There was some nice set up with the victim’s land being wanted by an oil company that could have led somewhere, but it just didn’t. By the time you get to the big reveal, it wasn’t exactly what you were expecting, but it was a pretty obvious choice and motive. That said, it was sort of a let down as I was expecting something bigger.

Overall this book was pretty good, but could use some more editing and smoothing out. It is a debut and the parts that I saw done well are solid enough to make me think about reading another book by this author.

I received a free copy from NetGalley. The story seems less about the mystery, where her coworker went, and more about setting Annie up with a well developed back ground to be a character in a future mystery series.