Snowden Wright's "The Queen City Detective Agency"

Snowden Wright is the author of American Pop and Play Pretty Blues. He has written for The Atlantic, Salon, Esquire, and the New York Daily News, among other publications. A former Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellow at the Carson McCullers Center, Wright lives in Yazoo County, Mississippi.

Here he dreamcasts an adaptation of his new novel, The Queen City Detective Agency:

My mind’s eye is a fountain of youth. It magically keeps actors the same age as when I first encountered them. For that reason, whenever I try to imagine which actors should play the co-leads in my latest novel, The Queen City Detective Agency, I think of ones who’ve aged out of the two parts: Sanaa Lathan and Steve Zahn, for example, or Thandiwe Newton and Norman Reedus.

In those pairs of examples, you probably noticed a specific racial coupling. There’s a reason why.

The central protagonist of Queen City is the private investigator Clementine Baldwin, a young Black woman and former cop. Clem’s a pragmatist at heart. In her early years as a PI, she quickly realized that as a Black woman in 1980s Mississippi, she wasn’t granted much authority by the white people she encountered during her investigations. To contend with such deeply ingrained racism, Clem hired a “prop” to stand beside her as she questioned witnesses, interviewed clients, and navigated the bureaucracy of city hall: a lunkhead of a white guy, as she at first calls him. Dixon Hicks may be a lunkhead, but he and Clem soon grow closer than she expected. By the start of the novel, they’ve reached a genuine partnership, one of mutual respect and camaraderie. Consider Hicks a Watson to Baldwin’s Holmes.

Although Sanaa Lathan and Thandiwe Newton would be great for Clem—as would Reedus and Zahn for Dixon—I feel it’s important to keep her age around thirty, not because of ageism on my part but professionalism on hers. Clem needs to be young enough to make mistakes. She needs to doubt herself. Clem isn’t new to private investigation, but she’s still learning the trade. For the part, I could see Myha’la, absolutely riveting in Industry and hilarious in Bodies, Bodies, Bodies; Jurnee Smollett, excellent in everything; Amandla Stenberg, star of The Hate U Give, which dealt with similar issues as Queen City; or Quintessa Swindell, perhaps less well-known than the others on this list but, I think, an actor to watch.

For Dixon? I could see Kyle Gallner, Lucas Till, Owen Teague, or Lukas Gage. The character has been (accurately) described to me as a human Golden Retriever. He’s also a decorated Vietnam vet who can handle himself. To play him, an actor needs strength and vulnerability, the same as whoever plays Clem.

Both actors need the opposite power of my mind’s eye. They have to be anti-fountains of youth, able to portray wise cynicism and cynical wisdom, flippancy and jadedness, assured composure and sure-fire wit beyond their thirty-something years. Any takers? I’ve been told the water’s fine.

Visit Snowden Wright's website.

The Page 69 Test: American Pop.

Writers Read: Snowden Wright (February 2019).

--Marshal Zeringue