Erica’s Pick of the Week: Trouble in Queenstown and Wordhunter

As a mystery lover, I’m always on the lookout for new series that feel both unexpected and satisfying – a tough combination. Luckily, this summer had two such titles – both introducing unconventional detectives I hope to see more of.

Delia Pitts’ Trouble in Queenstown features Evander “Vandy” Myrick, a cop-turned PI who has returned to home to Queenstown, New Jersey to grieve the loss of her daughter while she tends to her ailing father. When the mayor’s nephew hires her to follow his wife, Vandy jumps at the opportunity to land a well-connected client. Almost immediately, the case turns from surveillance to murder, revealing unsavory truths about the town, its power players, and Vandy’s own life.

While a detective with a tragic past fighting corruption and their own demons is hardly an unusual premise, Vandy breathes new life into the trope. She’s a Black woman of a certain age. She works hard to maintain her sobriety but indulges in plenty of other vices. She’s mired in grief and determined to build a future for herself. She’s confident but also quick to admit her mistakes. And despite her world-weariness, Vandy cares deeply about justice. 

Trouble in Queenstown blends compelling characters and thoroughly modern issues of class and race with the dark, urgent feel of classic hardboiled detective fiction.

Wordhunter, by Stella Strands, features another nontraditional sleuth: Maggie Moore, a genius linguistics student who hides behind a slew of piercings, a fondness for illegal substances, and a razor-sharp tongue. When her ability to profile suspects based on their writing catches the attention of the police in her small Florida town, she’s drawn into the case of a kidnapped girl. This this isn’t Maggie’s first kidnapping, though. Her best friend disappeared seven years ago, and she’s never quite been able to move on. Solving the present-day crime may give her answers to the past, but she’ll have to decide who to trust – herself included. 

Maggie is a classic (and thoroughly modern) misunderstood genius. She’s brilliant with language, diagramming sentences as a form of relaxation and uncovering hidden patterns within words. She’s also foul-mouthed and prone to making terrible choices. Most of all, she’s an authentic blend of bravado and vulnerability. She’s lived through a lot of hard things in her twenty-some years, and the subject matter can veer particularly dark. (Sensitive readers should be aware that there’s a lot of coarse language and violence.) 

If you’re looking for fresh, character-driven mysteries, Trouble in Queenstown and Wordhunter are well worth digging into.