Mississippi author Snowden Wright will be on hand Friday, Aug. 16, at the Meridian Museum of Art to sign copies of his new book, “The Queen City Detective Agency,” a tale about greed, corruption and murder set in the 1980s in Meridian.
The book celebration, an event of the Meridian Council for the Arts, will be held from 4-6 p.m. at the downtown art museum and will feature live music and refreshments. Copies of Wright’s new book, which goes on sale next Tuesday, will be available at the event or attendees can bring their own copy.
“It’s a good read. I’m excited about it. It had some twists and turns I didn’t expect,” said Sharon Pratt, a member of the arts council and an organizer of the book celebration.
A native of Meridian, Wright graduated from Lamar High School. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Darmouth College and a master’s degree in fine arts from Columbia University in New York. He has written for The Atlantic, Salon, Esquire, The Millions and the New York Daily News, among other publications, according to the biography on his website.
“The Queen City Detective Agency,” set to be published by HarperCollins, is Wright’s third novel.
Among the Yazoo County resident’s previous works are “Play Pretty Blues,” a historical fiction novel based on the life of legendary Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson, and “American Pop,” a fictional novel about the the rise and decline of a Mississippi family who founded the world’s first major soft drink company. “American Pop” garnered wide acclaim after its publication in 2019.
The book celebration at the Meridian Museum of Art will be the third stop on a six-state book signing tour for Wright once “The Queen City Detective Agency” launches Tuesday at Off Square Books in Oxford.
Wright’s new novel, while fictional, draws inspiration from a much publicized case his father, Judge Charles Wright, prosecuted while serving as a district attorney in Lauderdale County during the 1980s where a woman allegedly hired a man to kill her husband.
The opening scene in the book — where character Turnip Coogan, facing prison for murdering the husband, tries to escape from the Lauderdale County jail by climbing out a window forgetting the jail is on the roof of the county courthouse — was loosely based by an actual incident at the jail in 1984 though is fictionalized in the book.
“Following an unforgettable cast of characters and a jaded female P.I. enmeshed in a criminal conspiracy in 1980s Mississippi, ‘The Queen City Detective Agency’ is a riveting, razor-sharp Southern noir that unravels the greed, corruption, and racism at the heart of the American Dream,” according to a description of the book on the HarperCollins website.
Wright dedicated the novel to his parents, writing “To my father, who inspired parts of this story, and to my mother, for putting up with him.”
The Queen City Detective Agency is listed as one of the Amazon Editors’ Picks for August for mystery, thriller and suspense books.
Pratt encourages community residents to come out and visit with Wright during the book celebration and pick up a copy of the new novel.
“It’s always fun to hear a live author, but to be able to ask a writer, ‘Why did your character do this?’ is always interesting,” she said.