Although I enjoyed the story line of this book, the writing style was not for me. I came very close to DNFing this one several times. But I was invested enough that I wanted to know who was guilty and to see how it ended. I would probably pass on any others by this author in the future.

Evander Myrick, better known as Vandy, finds herself back in her small hometown of Queenstown, NJ, after her career in law enforcement comes to a halt. Back in her hometown, she opened a PI office, which will honor her dream. After all, her career in law enforcement was more about honoring her father’s expectations.

While I loved the premise, I struggled with the first chapter, pacing, and, at times, the story. I wanted to like Vandy, but she was a hard character to connect with. I was disappointed that she felt a little too much like a cut-out character and one who wasn’t as savvy as I thought she might be—especially considering her previous job.

On the other hand, the audiobook helped pull off the slow times and moved through the places that felt a little too cliche and overworked. Bahni Turpin as the narrator did a wonderful job of holding my attention.

Would I be interested in listening to the second book in the series? Absolutely. This series has potential.

Thanks, Macmillan Audio, for the advanced listening copy of the audiobook. #macaudio2024

“Evander ‘Vandy’ Myrick became a cop to fulfill her father’s expectations. After her world cratered, she became a private eye to satisfy her own. Now she's back in Queenstown, New Jersey, her childhood home, searching for solace and recovery. Vandy agrees to take on a new client, the mayor’s nephew, Leo Hannah, to keep the cash flowing and expand her local contacts. Leo wants Vandy to tail his wife to uncover evidence for a divorce suit.” A double homicide changes her plan of attack, as do several interesting new clients.

The main character, Vandy, is a quintessential PI: intelligent, strong, sarcastic, and a little haunted by her past. While the story has more “tell than show” than I like, I wanted to like the MC and appreciated her guts and determination. I think the audiobook delivery is what ultimately sold me on the book, especially the almost-over-the-top villains, who are hilariously entitled and ballsy with a New Jersey edge.

At first I really liked this mystery. I feel like I had things figured out for the most part. Then it just kept going and going, but I already felt like I had known things for a while, and so it just needed to wrap up.

I finished Trouble in Queenstown by Delia Pitts and here are my musings.


Vandy Myrick gave up being a cop to take on the world as a PI. Now she's back in her hometown, as a black woman and a business owner, she knows she has an uphill battle.

That is until Leo Hanna, the nephew of the Mayor, requests her services to tail his wife. Should be pretty easy and routine but when his wife is murdered in their home and the murderer shot by Leo, something doesn’t make sense and Vandy can’t keep her nose out of it.

YAHOOO this book was phenomenal! I read and listened to the audio and the narrator was BRILLIANT! I loved the sass of Vandy and her no nonsense way of conducting herself. Please tell me this is going to be a series! I loved the characters. Except Leo… Slippery MF.

I thought the plot was clever and the pace worked really well. There were a couple of slower spots but I felt like it was a little rest for the reader before you got the full POW again! The twists were excellent and the dialogue was really intelligent and realistic.

There wasn’t really anything I didn’t like, it was a really entertaining book. I really think if you like thrillers with a bad @ss MC.. This has to be your next read!

4.5 stars!

Thank you to @minotaurbooks and @netgalley for my gifted ALC and ARC.

Delia Pitts has been writing mysteries for quite some time, but she is new to me. In Trouble in Queenstown, she introduces hardboiled sleuth Evander Myrick. Myrick’s friends call her Vandy, and that helps to distinguish her from her elderly father for whom she is named; he’s in a memory care unit.

My thanks go to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and St. Martin’s Press for the review copies. This book is for sale now.

At first glance, I thought that this detective fiction was set in New Zealand. Queenstown, right? But in this case, the locale is Queenstown, New Jersey. The story opens with Vandy cleaning up a mess in her office just as Leo Hannah storms in and wants to see Evander Myrick. He assumes Myrick will be a Caucasian male, and that Myrick herself is a member of the cleaning staff.

Oops.

Hannah comes to hire Vandy in the wake of his wife’s murder. He knows exactly who did it, he tells her, and he wants her to prove it, starting with some surveillance. Vandy isn’t sure she should take this job, but she has to pay top dollar to keep her daddy in the best facility, so she reluctantly signs on. As the story progresses, there are numerous twists and turns, and the violence escalates. By the story’s end, three different people have tried to hire her for exactly the same case!

The thing I appreciate here is the way Pitts addresses cop racism. So many detective novels require the reader to suspend belief, to assume that every cop is fearlessly dedicated to finding out the unvarnished truth and arresting the perpetrator of the crime, regardless of race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. But as Vandy conducts her investigation, Pitts keeps it real. At one point the detective speaks with a salon stylist that worked on Ivy’s hair, and he tells her that Ivy was afraid of someone at home. Vandy asks if he contacted the police.

“’The police?’ He jerked his neck, pursing his lips as if I’d farted. ‘Girl, you think the cops came here?’ He sniffed. ‘You don’t look like a fool. Maybe I read you wrong.’”

Sadly, the second half of the book doesn’t impress me as much as the first half does. I have a short list of tropes that I never want to see again in a mystery novel, and she trips a few, including my most hated one. I won’t go into details because it’s too far into the story, and I don’t want to spoil anything, but when it appears, I sit back, disengage from the text, and roll my eyes. Ohhh buh-ruther. As I continue reading, I can see who the murderer is well in advance, and the climax itself is a bit over the top, though without the tropes, I mightn’t have noticed this last issue.

In addition to the digital review copy, I have the audio. The reader does a fine job.

The more mysteries a person reads, the staler tropes become. I am perhaps more sensitive than most readers, having logged over a thousand novels in this genre. Readers that have not read many mysteries are less likely to be aware of, and therefore bothered by overused elements, and so this book may please you much more than it did me. But for hardened, crochety old readers such as myself, I recommend getting this book free or cheap, if you choose to read it. Newer readers may enjoy it enough to justify the sticker price.

I enjoyed this book, lots of twists and turns and dirty politics makes for interesting reading! I loved the main character, she was feisty, and sad and has a backstory I would like to know more about. I would definitely recommend this book as well as reading additional books about this character in the future!

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

In a classic ode to the detective and film noir stories of the past, this is a story of a black New Jersey detective who is hired by different parties to investigate what happened that caused the deaths of two people. It’s dark, mysterious, edgy, and in all a pretty good story.

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Evander "Vandy" Myrick moves back to her hometown in New Jersey to be closer to her ailing father and picks up work as a private investigator. When she takes on a new case for the mayor's nephew, who's seeking a divorce, she gets more than she bargained for when she walks in on a double murder.

Vandy is a great main character with a lot of sass and grit. I thought some aspects of her career and investigation skills were a bit far fetched, and I would have liked to see at least a dual perspective instead of just Vandy's side of the story. But all in all, this was an enjoyable read that shows just how much of a small world a small town can be. The theme of race is strong in this book and made the story more interesting to follow.

The audiobook narrator did a wonderful job of bringing Vandy and the other characters to life.

I’ll keep this short and sweet.

I didn’t like the characters, including Vandy, our MC. I found her unnecessarily brash, and I didn’t enjoy spending time with her.

The content felt too preachy with the social commentary. Even when I agree, I don’t need an issue shoved at me throughout a book I’m reading for entertainment.

The writing is fine, though again, I didn’t connect well.

I had an ebook copy and probably wouldn’t have finished it. I wound up solely listening to the audiobook. The narrator does a great job.

*I received a free eARC from Minotaur Books via NetGalley, and a free audiobook download from Macmillan Audio.*

This was a murder mystery like no other, from the first paragraph I was in and it just got better. The smart mouth wit of our main character to the no holding back in the words that were used through out. It made the story feel so real like we were reading a true story because most authors wouldn’t be that brave. The story and twist was so good I really didn’t see it all coming and loved it.

Vandy Myrick is a private investigator in Queenstown, New Jersey. She is hired by the mayor’s nephew, Leo Hannah, to investigate his wife. As the story becomes more complicated, Leo’s wife is murdered. Vandy immediately that something is not adding up and becomes suspicious as the murder case is closed very quickly. Vandy follows her instincts to keep investigating even though some residents of Queenstown try to stop her.

I really enjoyed the narration of this audiobook and Vandy’s character. Vandy had a tough exterior, was strong-willed and determined, and had a heartbreaking backstory. The story was enjoyable, but I would have liked more twists and turns as well as a more detailed look at the relationship of Vandy and her daughter.

Thank you to @macmillan.audio @netgalley and @minotaur_books for the ALC of this title.

While the book was enjoyable, I was a little turned off on how bland the book seemed. The story was great but it just took to long for the climax to come

Vandy Myrick is a private investigator in her hometown of Queenstown. Vandy is spiraling down a rabbit hole due to all of the tragedies in her life. Her daughter passed away, she quit the police force after an incident that was brought on by her grief, her father has Alzheimer's, her mother passed not long before her daughter, and she has given up on finding any real connection with people, especially men. Then she is hired by the mayor's nephew to investigate his wife when her wife is murdered, then pretty much everyone either hires Vandy or tries to kill Vandy over the investigation of this murder. During this time Vandy discovers more than she bargains for.
I wanted to like this book more because honestly, the narration is so amazing that it kept me engaged when I wanted to walk away. Turpin does such a great job in bringing the emotion to her voicework that you feel everything that the characters are, you feel the heartbreak, the anger, or resentment, this is what kept me listening. Turpin is just top-notch at her job. The story itself was, ok. It dragged on and on and there were no really likeable characters. Vandy goes out of her way to be unlikeable, but it is really hard to feel a connection to the MC, and that makes it hard to stay engaged. The story setting also feels like a small southern town instead of a town in New Jersey. Granted, I've never been to Jersey, but the dynamics between the racial divides, class divides, and general divides really feel like it set in the South. Everyone is so hateful, everyone, even if they aren't trying there is so much animosity and sniping. With that being said, a lot is going on and this book deals with a lot of hard topics including grief, class, race, and some crazy families. Though the characters may not be likable you find yourself mesmerized by the trainwreck that is the investigation and the tenacity of our MC who refuses to give up even when the forces around her try to make her quit. Overall the book is ok. Very slow going, with lots of hard topics and beautiful narration, with an over-the-top and unbelievable ending.

Trouble in Queenstown is a small town mystery that, at its core is about family.
Evander (Vandy) Myrick is back in her hometown where everyone is in everyone's business. You know the term, where everyone knows your name? That's Q-town.
She's there to watch over her father who has dementia and is soon hired for a Pl gig. But when that Pl gig turns into a murder mystery, that is where we begin to see how many threads connect all the people of Queenstown.
I love seeing a strong female character in a predominantly male field and Vandy was pretty darn badass. She's had a tragic past with her father as well as daughter, but she still wants to prove others wrong and that she is strong enough to do her job well. The beginning was a little slow to build, but it was the background characterization we needed to understand Vandy and where she came from. But once the murder took place, it was mystery goodness.
Listening to the audio narrated by Bahni Turpin brought Evander's story to life. You could easily understand where she came from with her past, but also got a sense of her strength and wanting to find answers. I liked how the story was divided up by each of Vandy's clients and how she worked in order for them to get the answers to not only the murder, but also finding out how unexpectedly interconnected all the characters were. It brought light to this small town that was filled with secrets that all came to a head.

This was a fantastic mystery! I'd never read this author before and was very pleasantly surprised by how good this was. There were so many twists and turns and reveals that I never saw coming.

Trouble in Queenstown has a moody nostalgic feel. Featuring Vandy a PI with past trauma starting her life over back in her hometown. This book deals with such factors as racism, socioeconomic diversity, and family secrets amid a backdrop of a corrupt small town.

I enjoyed this one very much and hope it ends up becoming a series. The audiobook was narrated by Bahni Turpin, who brings a lot of emotion to this story.

Thank you, Netgalley and Macmillan Audio, for this ALC.

I had the chance to read an advanced copy of "Trouble in Queenstown: A Mystery" by Delia Pitts, courtesy of NetGalley. The novel follows "Vandy" Myrick, a former cop who took on private detective work to live up to her own ambitions rather than her father’s. Her latest case, centered around a complex divorce, promises intrigue with its twists and turns.

I genuinely wanted to enjoy this book, but unfortunately, I found the story lacked compelling elements and the characters were not as well developed as I hoped. Despite my efforts to engage with the narrative, it was a challenge to connect with the main character. Vandy's mysterious nature, intended to add depth, instead made her feel distant and hard to relate to. This was a book I struggled to finish, as it didn't fully draw me into its world.

Vandy Myrick is a former cop turned PI. She has returned home to Q-Town and is attempting to make ends meet by taking what cases she can. When the nephew of the town's mayor comes to her with what seems like a routine surveillance job she jumps at the opportunity. The case quickly spins out of control when the woman she is hired to follow ends up dead.

This was an incredibly good mystery book. I highly suggest seeking out a list of trigger warnings due to some very sensitive topics. Vandy is a tough but flawed main character that you will absolutely root for. There were so many twists and turns in the story. If this ends up being a series I highly look forward to the next installment.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillian Audio for the ALC in exchange for an honest review.

I will not be providing a review for this book because I was not able to finish it. The narrator was not compatible with my ears. I tried multiple times and just could not handle their form of narration.

This was a very fast-paced thriller with lots of characters to keep up with. I felt like a lot of it was fluff and unnecessary side storylines. There was a good bit of more graphic aspects such as the death in the beginning and normally that is not up my alley. I liked Vandy as the main lead and I wanted her to be successful. The beginning kept me interested and once I got to the middle and end I was just kinda over it.