Pay Dirt Road

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.

Author: Samantha Jayne Allen
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Published: 04/19/2022
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.40w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9781250804273

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 11/01/2021 pg. 1
Publishers Weekly 01/03/2022
Kirkus Reviews 02/01/2022
Booklist 02/15/2022 pg. 26
Library Journal 03/01/2022 pg. 122
Shelf Awareness 04/26/2022