Fortune Favors the Dead
Ratings19
Average rating3.7
A wildly charming and fast-paced mystery written with all the panache of the hardboiled classics, Fortune Favors the Dead introduces Pentecost and Parker, an audacious new detective duo for the ages. “Razor-sharp style, tons of flair, a snappy sense of humor, and all the most satisfying elements of a really good noir novel, plus plenty of original twists of its own.”—Tana French, bestselling author of The Searcher It's 1942 and Willowjean "Will" Parker is a scrappy circus runaway whose knife-throwing skills have just saved the life of New York's best, and most unorthodox, private investigator, Lillian Pentecost. When the dapper detective summons Will a few days later, she doesn't expect to be offered a life-changing proposition: Lillian's multiple sclerosis means she can't keep up with her old case load alone, so she wants to hire Will to be her right-hand woman. In return, Will is to receive a salary, room and board, and training in Lillian's very particular art of investigation. Three years later, Will and Lillian are on the Collins case: Abigail Collins was found bludgeoned to death with a crystal ball following a big, boozy Halloween party at her home—her body slumped in the same chair where her steel magnate husband shot himself the year before. With rumors flying that Abigail was bumped off by the vengeful spirit of her husband (who else could have gotten inside the locked room?), the family has tasked the detectives with finding answers where the police have failed. But that's easier said than done in a case that involves messages from the dead, a seductive spiritualist, and Becca Collins—the beautiful daughter of the deceased, who Will quickly starts falling for. When Will and Becca's relationship dances beyond the professional, Will finds herself in dangerous territory, and discovers she may have become the murderer's next target.
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Series
4 primary booksPentecost and Parker
Pentecost and Parker is a 4-book series with 5 primary works first released in 2020 with contributions by Stephen Spotswood.
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I hope there is a sequel to this debut novel! Fab, fun NYC 1945-noir, featuring P/I Lillian Pentecost and her second-in-command, Willowjean “Will” Parker. As the book opens, Will is a young female runaway working in a traveling circus. One night he saves a woman's life by throwing a knife and killing her attacker. The woman was Lillian and she was on a case. Though not old, Lillian has M.S. which is slowly her down year by year. Lillian offers Will a job, training, a good salary, room and board. Quickly 3 years pass and they are investigating the case of a wealthy woman bludgeoned to death on the evening of a party at her house. The rest of the novel concerns that case, the woman's family, prior history and family conflicts. It's wry and witty and clever. The characters are lovable and the pace is swift. And a great cover. Loved it.
OK, this was actually really so entertaining and enjoyable than I had any reason to expect it to be. I picked it up the title intrigued me in the library and it seemed to have fairly good reviews, but I've been bamboozled by good reviews and aesthetic covers before. Mystery novels are nowadays a dime a dozen, so I was expecting something merely to pass the time but this book was actually more than that.
Willowjean Parker, or Will as she prefers to call herself, is a small-time circus act who gets accidentally caught up in a crime and thus into the orbit of Lilian Pentecost, genius lady detective with a progressive disease. They strike up a investigative partnership and get onto the track of solving crimes together in New York City. Years into their partnership, they are approached to solve a locked-room murder mystery. Abigail Collins, wealthy matriarch of the Collins company, was found bludgeoned to death in her room at her own Halloween party, and the immediate gossip that goes up is that it was the ghost of her late husband, Alistair Collins who had committed suicide a year earlier, that had done it.
Now, rest assured that there isn't any kind of weird supernatural twist to this book. It's a straight up mystery-thriller set in the 1940s, with a lot of free love to boot. There's m/m, f/f, and bisexual representation here but it's delicately portrayed that it doesn't feel like a 21st century work masquerading as historical fiction. It does take into account prevailing social mores of the time, and combined with something that at least sounds like 1940s slang to my layperson's point of view, it did surprisingly well in immersing me in a believable 1940s setting. Will Parker is our narrator and protagonist for the whole novel and there's something about her that does make me want to root for her, which is great.
The solution was satisfyingly unexpected and the pacing was excellent. The book kept me guessing for most of it, and surprise developments kept me on my toes. I guessed about 20% of the solution (I strongly suspected that Becca had murdered Ariel Belestrade because her alibi of being “locked in her room all night” crying over Will just felt very flimsy.) but the rest had been somewhat unexpected and everything fell into place quite nicely, tying up loose ends coming from the very beginning of the mystery, which is exactly what a good cozy mystery ought to be imo!
Thoughts on the ending: I loved that we had a little epilogue with Olivia Waterhouse - a sort of pseudo-altruistic female Moriarty? Very excited to see where that's going to turn up, and I love how the McCloskey case which introduced Will to Lilian in the first place is probably going to end up being one link in the overarching case with Waterhouse. I did suspect Becca to be Belestrade's murderer, but hadn't figured her to be the murderer of her own mother too. I loved that little touch with John Meredith being the twins' father, I hadn't expected that one and really thought he was just getting sleazy with Becca. I kinda figured that the twins' father wasn't going to be Alistair. Thought it might have been Harrison at first, but after the book pointed that out explicitly, I gave up on that line and imagined it to be someone else entirely, but somehow hadn't thought of Meredith.
Overall, a very well-paced and well-written mystery that was both engaging and entertaining throughout. I'd be interested to check out the rest of the series!
Seriously such a great book. I loved the wittiness, the mystery, our main characters. All of it. I found no flaws.
