I love finding a new series to explore. Fortune Favours the Dead by Stephen Spotswood is first in the late 1940s New York-set Pentecost & Parker detective series. Certainly different from anything else I’ve read in this genre. The post-war city setting is dynamic and refreshing. When circus runaway Willowjean Parker meets her new boss, private detective Lillian Pentecost, it is so nearly their last meeting. Ms Pentecost, whose advice has been sought in the past by Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of the wartime president, recognises Will’s unusual talents – knife-throwing, sharpshooting, bareback horse riding, fire-eating and how to get out of a straitjacket – and recruits her as her private assistant. New York is a swirling mixture of poverty, opportunity, change and excess. The war has ended and everyone is adjusting to the new rules of life. When wealthy widow Abigail Collins is murdered not long after her husband committed suicide, and in the same room of their mansion, the police investigation stalls. So the family calls in Lillian Pentecost to investigate. The Collins family steelworks faces financial trouble as wartime contracts are up for renewal, soldiers are returning from war to the jobs done in their absence by women, and rumours are circulating that Abigail was killed by her dead husband Al.
The Abigail Collins case is told from Will’s viewpoint, a nice mixture of detecting, caring for her fragile boss, and going off track pursuing her own suspicions. Will – newly trained in law, shorthand, car mechanics, bookkeeping and driving – is brave, strong and well-meaning. Sometimes she gets into trouble but she often digs up new evidence. Something that MS-sufferer Ms Pentecost, Ms. P, is less able to do. In a future book I’d like to hear more from Ms. P.
The death of Abigail in a locked room seems impossible to solve but the combination of Ms. P’s razor-sharp mind, memory of past crimes and vast cuttings archive, with Will’s derring-do, leads them to clues the police have failed to spot. There are plenty of suspects and witnesses; a theatrical fortune teller and her slimy assistant, a brawny factory manager, Abigail and Al’s fragile son and daughter, Al’s business partner, a failed journalist turned archivist and an academic sceptical about clairvoyancy.
The setting is special, the relationship between the two lead female characters is special. I’ve read a lot of crime novels of different sub-genres and have an eye for spotting the guilty party, Fortune Favours the Dead kept me guessing until the last pages. And it’s fun.
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If you like this, try:-
‘The Killing of Polly Carter’ by Robert Thorogood [#2 Death in Paradise]
‘Big Sky’ by Kate Atkinson [Jackson Brodie #5]
‘The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle’ by Stuart Turton

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#BookReview FORTUNE FAVOURS THE DEAD by Stephen Spotswood @playwrightSteve https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-6VM via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-