On New Year’s Day 1985, as the countdown to Ronald Reagan’s second presidential inauguration begins, Turnip Coogan, in custody for the murder of real estate developer Randall Hubbard, falls from the roof of the courthouse in downtown Meridian, Mississippi. It may be morning in the rest of America, but that Reaganite optimism has bypassed the state’s “Queen City,” where strip malls developed by the late Hubbard have “sucked the life out of the city’s downtown” and its convenient location between New Orleans and Atlanta has made Meridian “a vital pit stop in the loosely affiliated crime belt of the Deep South.” Knowing of her son’s connection to the notorious Dixie Mafia, Lenora Coogan is convinced that his death was neither an accident nor a suicide and hires Black cop-turned-private investigator Clementine Baldwin and her white partner, Dixon Hicks, to find the “sons of bitches who killed him.” Complicating the investigation is the still-jailed Odette Hubbard, who had recruited Turnip to kill her husband and then canceled the hit job. She wants Clem and Dixon to identify the real killer, a request that puts a target on Clem’s back. Jim Crow laws may be a thing of the past, but Clem still must battle old-fashioned racism as she goes after the city’s powerbrokers. Wright’s (American Pop) Southern noir introduces a compelling, complex, bourbon-loving sleuth who both loathes and loves her hometown. Her budding friendship with Dixon will have readers anticipating their next crime-solving adventure.
