Trouble in Queenstown
Vandy Myrick • Book 1
by Delia C. Pitts
Why You'll Love This
A Black woman PI returns to her small New Jersey hometown to heal — and finds the past has been waiting for her.
- Great if you want: mysteries where race, grief, and class actually shape the plot
- The experience: grounded and character-driven, with a lived-in small-town atmosphere
- The writing: Pitts writes Vandy with specificity and emotional weight — no stock detective here
- Skip if: you prefer fast-paced thrillers over character-centered mysteries
About This Book
Vandy Myrick didn't choose the quiet life in Queenstown, New Jersey — she retreated to it, carrying the wreckage of a career and a grief she hasn't finished unpacking. What she finds instead of peace is a small, tight-wound community where everyone knows your family name and nobody forgets a stumble. When a routine divorce case pulls her deeper into the social fault lines of Q-Town — class, race, old money, and older grudges — Vandy has to decide how much of herself she's willing to risk for a place that may not deserve her loyalty. The stakes are personal in the way only a hometown can make them.
Delia C. Pitts writes with a sharp, unsentimental eye and a voice that feels genuinely earned. Vandy is a fully realized woman — wry, watchful, carrying complicated feelings about ambition and belonging — and Pitts gives her room to breathe rather than rushing toward the next plot beat. The Queenstown setting does real atmospheric work, neither romanticized nor dismissed. This is character-driven mystery fiction where the investigation and the inner life move together, each one pressing on the other in ways that keep the pages turning.
