Murder Crossed Her Mind by Stephen Spotswood was published in 2023. The previous books in the series are Fortune Favors the Dead, 2020; Murder Under Her Skin, 2021, and Secrets Typed in Blood, 2022.
Our Sleuth(s): Eccentric detective genius Lillian Pentecost is assisted by right-hand woman Willowjean “Will” Parker, who handles the legwork and security. Parker narrates the action.
The Setting: We’re in New York in the 1940s.
The Premise: In this entry, the fourth in the Pentecost and Parker mystery series, the duo is hired to track down a reclusive former legal secretary with a photographic memory. Their search yields any number of suspects, from clients at the law firm where she used to work to the Nazi spies she helped the FBI to identify. Meanwhile, Parker is trying to find the conniving couple who stole her gun and Pentecost’s secretive past is returning to haunt her.
My Take: I’m a big fan of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe, the iconic orchid-loving detective who seldom left his New York brownstone but managed, with the help of legman and ladies’ man Archie Goodwin, to solve any number of high-profile puzzles. Author Stephen Spotswood pays an homage of sorts with the older Pentecost, whose activity is diminished by multiple sclerosis, and the younger Parker, who’s a bit of a ladies’ woman herself. Spotswood’s first book in the series, Fortune Favors the Dead, won the Nero Award.
But Pentecost and Parker are no pale imitations. The author has created a fully realized pair of characters whose disparate backgrounds — an educated aristocrat and a former circus carny – somehow click beautifully. They’re headstrong and independent, plowing right through the societal restrictions governing women in the 1940s as they banter and battle their way to the truth and, occasionally, justice.
As a writer, I’m intrigued by Spotswood’s pairing of the two and the rich storytelling opportunities it provides. Parker is a fish out of water in her new role in the big city, learning to control her quick temper in polite — and impolite — society. Pentecost is struggling with the worsening symptoms of MS and the limits it imposes on her independence. Over the course of his four books so far, the author has deepened their initially wary relationship into something much more.
Opening Lines:
I thought I knew what pain was.
I was wrong.
I’ve been punched, kicked, stabbed, strangled, bitten, and burned. I even got electrocuted that one time.
Nothing compared to this.
I was shaking, covered in cold sweat. There were screams in the distance. My torturer had his back to me, fiddling with something on his table of abominable devices. He turned toward me, a mouthful of yellow teeth peering out through that terrible rictus of a grin.
Heads Up: While Parker’s bisexuality is treated with respect in the series, this fourth novel includes a difficult scene of homophobia by police.
Etc. Spotswood talks about the inspiration for Pentecost and Parker, including the need for representation for someone facing a chronic illness, in his interview “Subverting Stereotypes” with Publishers Weekly.
FemaleSleuths.com 