Queenstown, New Jersey, feels big when you need help and tiny when you want privacy. For Vandy Myrick, that’s both a blessing and a curse. Now that Vandy’s back in “Q-Town,” her services as her hometown’s only Black woman private investigator have earned her more celebrity—or notoriety—than she figured.
Keeping busy with work helps Vandy deal with the grief of losing her daughter, stitching the seams, cementing the gaps. The memories will always remain, and they come crashing back to the surface when her ex-husband, Phil Bolden, walks back into her life. Promising everything, returning home, restoring family. Until she answers her door to the news that Phil has been murdered. And Vandy decides Phil is now her client.
It’s hard to separate the Phil that Vandy knew from the one Queenstown did. She sees him—and their daughter—in Phil’s son, who attends a prestigious local high school. She sees the layers of a complicated marriage with his wife. She sees all of Phil’s various roles: parent, husband, businessman, philanthropist. But which role got him killed?
Death of an Ex by Delia Pitts will be published July 15, 2025. St. Martin's Press provided an early galley for review.
I liked the first book of this series - 2024's Trouble in Queenstown. Therefore, I wanted to give the sequel a chance as well.
In Pitts' Queenstown, there is an awful lot of folks dancing along the morally gray lines, including our protagonist Vandy. While I see it a lot in this genre of fiction, it really jumped out to me a lot more when reading this story.
Admittedly, I found myself disengaged with the story at several times throughout. I also noted a number of tropes in the plot that did not saying very much new on the subject. This easily contributed to my lack of focus. Readers want to be surprised and challenged.
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