Pay Dirt Road by Samantha Jayne Allen #bookreview #bookseries

I purchased this book for my own personal collection.

Publisher: Minotaur Books

Published: April 19, 2022

 

Summary:

Friday Night Lights meets Mare of Easttown in this small-town mystery about an unlikely private investigator searching for a missing waitress. Pay Dirt Road is the mesmerizing debut from the 2019 Tony Hillerman Prize recipient Samantha Jayne Allen.

Annie McIntyre has a love/hate relationship with Garnett, Texas.

Recently graduated from college and home waitressing, lacking not in ambition but certainly in direction, Annie is lured into the family business — a private investigation firm — by her supposed-to-be-retired grandfather, Leroy, despite the rest of the clan’s misgivings.

When a waitress at the café goes missing, Annie and Leroy begin an investigation that leads them down rural routes and haunted byways, to noxious-smelling oil fields and to the glowing neon of local honky-tonks. As Annie works to uncover the truth she finds herself identifying with the victim in increasing, unsettling ways, and realizes she must confront her own past — failed romances, a disturbing experience she’d rather forget, and the trick mirror of nostalgia itself — if she wants to survive this homecoming.

 

My thoughts:

I picked this one up a while ago and never got around to reading it, but when I saw that the next book in the series was coming out soon, I knew I had to get to this one. Whenever possible, I always love to start a series at the beginning and I’m glad I got the chance to do that with this one and now I’m even more excited to read book 2!

This has so many things going for it and I’m so excited that it all worked for me. It’s a debut novel – and we all know how much I love discovering those debut novelists!!! – and it’s a small-town mystery! Those are also among my favorite types of reads and in this particular instance, it works so well. I will say this does feel a bit more character-driven than plot-driven, but for a first book in a new series, I’m totally ok with that. I loved getting to know Annie and seeing how she fits in to the town and to her family’s private investigation firm.

This is definitely a slow-burn but I happen to enjoy those every now and then, and it worked here. The tension builds over the course of the story and I felt that with all the secrets that end up being uncovered and the small-town life that is explored, a slow-burn is just what is needed here. It is very atmospheric and I found myself completely engaged in what was going on and caught off guard by the reveal at the end.

I am definitely looking forward to continuing on with this series – I already have book two on hand and will hopefully be reading it soon!

 

Books in this series:

1. Pay Dirt Road
2. Hard Rain