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I have been looking forward to writing this review. Not only is it a good, tight murder investigation in which the characters use logic and shoe leather to follow leads, but the main character, Clementine has a mouth on her that will take the tin off a galvanized bucket. As an added layer, the omniscient narrator both disparages the Deep South in terms that are so catty they practically meow, yet loves the place and genuinely wishes it better. The Queen City Detective Agency, because of the Black-White relations written into the private investigator characters, and because of our own deeply held prejudices and stereotypes, makes us both think and laugh.
Dramatis personae: Clementine Baldwin, proprietor of the Queen City Detective Agency and Black ex-cop; Dixon Hicks, her new hire, White Vietnam vet and ex-star quarterback; Clem's dad, Lauder, incarcerated; Lenora Coogan, Turnip Coogan's mom; Molly Coogan, Turnip's pregnant wife; Dixie Mafiosi and the like: Jacob Cassidy, Dixie Mafia hitman, lives with his mom; Christopher, Jacob's muscle, a gay man, lover of Flynn, who has AIDS, and who has moved away; Harold John Riggins, Vietnam vet who is good with explosives but not with logic, works as a custodian at the jailhouse, loves Odette; Law enforcement types: William Pickett, DA and his assistant DA Russ Clyde, for whom Clem has the hots; Businessmen: Chaunce Latimer, racist and car dealer; Randall Hubbard, real estate developer, alas deceased; Odette Hubbard, his wife, who had put a contract out on her husband, then changed her mind, currently in jail, loves Harold John; Hamilton Delcroix, who buys up Randall's real estate holdings after the latter's rather sudden death; police officers, town characters.
Our novel, and the South, speak through places and things associated with those places: Lakeshoals Country Club, a place in our novel, does not allow people with a natural suntan. The club keeps those undesirables out by only allowing those in whose parents have also been members. Clementine Baldwin, proprietor of the Queen City Detective Agency and woman of color, is granted membership to the country club because her dad was a member. Down the road is the Big Easy RV and Mobile Home Village, where Lenora Coogan makes her home. Lenora has hired Clem Baldwin to investigate the death of her son, Turnip, who appears to have jumped off the roof of the jailhouse. Every piece of the scene at Lenora's says "Trailer Trash": the blue housecoat Lenora is wearing, her chain-smoking, the Kool-Aid in the refrigerator, the TV with rabbit ears. Finally, there is "the ranch." It is a place alluded to, but which remains unseen until the denouement of the novel. It is the prized hangout of the Dixie Mafia. As the Dixie Mafia is a group many people don't believe even exists, a boogey in the nighttime to scare children with, so the ranch is somewhere 'out there,' in a place in mind, but in no place on a map. At the end of the novel, no place on a map is given a truly evil and hateful reality.
The places in Snowdon Wright's novel delineate haves and have-nots, but it makes few distinctions between good and evil. It is Clementine Baldwin's (Black) and her assistant's (White) place to move between have and have-not, and to suss out how a veneer of good can gloss over a heart of evil. To add layers of background and thus set up a pickup truckload of irony, the novel is set in Ronald Reagan's America. Remember trickle-down economics that didn't? Remember how ignoring AIDS made it go away (Not)?
My description here fails to tell how very funny this novel is. The stereotypes, trailer trash, the fat used car salesman, the stupid southerner who lives with his mom, are so well drawn it seems like they have walked out of a Walt Kelly comic strip. As we watch, some of these characters transmogrify. Stupid hicks utter some words of truth or wisdom. The fat salesman wields power beyond his appearance. And Clem has a mouth on her. Had her mama lived past her birth, she would have washed Clem's mouth out with soap. It is the QUEEN CITY DETECTIVE AGENCY's constant debunking, its sucking readers into the stereotype, then tripping us up, that makes this novel a delight to read. This novel uses humor to take on the big ones: interracial hatred, snobbery, greed, poverty, ignorance, criminality. At the end, we discover that the enemy really is us.
I send my hearty recommendation that you give it a read.
§ Cathy Downs is professor emerita, English, American literature, Texas A&M University-Kingsville. These days she makes quilts, cultivates a garden, remodels a home, feeds the cats, and enjoys dipping into reading of the mysterious kind.
Reviewed by Cathy Downs, July 2024
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