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A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice • Rex Stout meets Agatha Christie with a fresh twist in the new Pentecost and Parker Mystery, a delightfully hardboiled high-wire act starring two daring women sleuths dead set on justice as they set out to solve a murder at a traveling circus “A delight.... It’s a pleasure to watch [Pentecost and Parker] sifting through red herrings and peeling secrets back like layers of an onion.” The New York Times Book Review Someone’s put a blade in the back of the Amazing Tattooed Woman, and Willowjean “Will” Parker’s former knife-throwing mentor has been stitched up for the crime. To uncover the truth, Will and her boss, world-famous detective Lillian Pentecost, travel to the circus, where they find a snake pit of old grudges, small-town crime, and secrets worth killing for. Will called Hart & Halloway’s Traveling Circus and Sideshow home for five years, and Ruby Donner, the circus’s tattooed ingenue, was her friend. To make matters worse, the prime suspect is Valentin Kalishenko, the man who taught Will everything she knows about putting a knife where it needs to go. To uncover the real killer and keep Kalishenko from a date with the electric chair, Will and Ms. Pentecost join the circus in sleepy Stoppard, Virginia, where the locals like their cocktails mild, the past buried, and big-city detectives not at all. The two swiftly find themselves lost in a funhouse of lies as Will begins to realize that her former circus compatriots aren’t playing it straight, and that her murdered friend might have been hiding a lot of secrets beneath all that ink.
A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice • Rex Stout meets Agatha Christie with a fresh twist in the new Pentecost and Parker Mystery, a delightfully hardboiled high-wire act starring two daring women sleuths dead set on justice as they set out to solve a murder at a traveling circus “A delight.... It’s a pleasure to watch [Pentecost and Parker] sifting through red herrings and peeling secrets back like layers of an onion.” The New York Times Book Review Someone’s put a blade in the back of the Amazing Tattooed Woman, and Willowjean “Will” Parker’s former knife-throwing mentor has been stitched up for the crime. To uncover the truth, Will and her boss, world-famous detective Lillian Pentecost, travel to the circus, where they find a snake pit of old grudges, small-town crime, and secrets worth killing for. Will called Hart & Halloway’s Traveling Circus and Sideshow home for five years, and Ruby Donner, the circus’s tattooed ingenue, was her friend. To make matters worse, the prime suspect is Valentin Kalishenko, the man who taught Will everything she knows about putting a knife where it needs to go. To uncover the real killer and keep Kalishenko from a date with the electric chair, Will and Ms. Pentecost join the circus in sleepy Stoppard, Virginia, where the locals like their cocktails mild, the past buried, and big-city detectives not at all. The two swiftly find themselves lost in a funhouse of lies as Will begins to realize that her former circus compatriots aren’t playing it straight, and that her murdered friend might have been hiding a lot of secrets beneath all that ink.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the cover
Chapter 1
The prosecution calls Lillian Pentecost to the stand.
A wave of barely hushed whispers washed over the courtroom. Judge Harman, never one to shy away from a good gavel-banging, let it go unscolded for a change. He couldn’t really blame folks. They’d been packed shoulder to shoulder on the hard courtroom benches for three long days, watching the calendar flip from July to August 1946 while they slogged through the boring nuts and bolts of the prosecution’s case. Waiting for the real drama to start.
The air-conditioning had gone belly-up halfway through day one and the two hundred or so reporters, family members, and assorted lookie-loos were sweating through their stay-pressed as we approached the climax of the city’s murder trial of the moment.
My boss was the climax.
Every eye in the room was on Lillian Pentecost as she made her way to the witness stand, cane thumping out an even rhythm on the courtroom’s hardwood floor. She cut an impressive figure: tall, slender, on the far side of forty, impeccable posture—the better to show off the lines of her gray herringbone suit, white collared blouse, and favorite blood-red tie. Her long chestnut hair was tied up in a labyrinth of braids, her signature streak of gray weaving through like a vein of quicksilver.
I even got her to slap on some makeup. A little eye shadow to bring out the winter-gray of her eyes, blush to add drama to her hawkish profile, and the palest of pink lipsticks to make her mouth seem a tad less severe. The goal was no-nonsense but approachable. A woman you’d trust to tell you who murdered who.
The defense table was an island of stillness in the midst of the tittering. Forest Whitsun, attorney for the defense, turned in his seat to watch Ms. P’s approach, the look on his face steely confidence mixed with a dash of curiosity.
Sure, I’m interested in what she has to say, his expression told the jurors, but only so I can explain to you good people why she’s mistaken.
As for the defendant, you could have propped him outside a cigar shop, he was so wooden. Over the last few days, Barry Sendak had perfected the look of the unjustly accused, woe-is-me. Now, his eyes were blank, lips pressed in a thin line.
I’ll give him this, though—he didn’t look like an arsonist.
Which was a problem.
Not that arsonists come ready-to-wear. But you’d expect someone who was responsible for burning seventeen people alive and leaving hundreds more homeless and grieving to show it on his face.
The Old Testament scribblers had it right. Murder should leave a mark.
But that was wishful thinking.
The jury had spent the last three days looking for a tell and coming up empty. All they saw was a soft pudge of a man who barely topped five feet. Who at thirty was sliding to bald and thought a brush mustache would make up the difference. He had the imposed-upon air of a civil servant, which is exactly what he was, having spent the last ten years as a safety inspector for the New York City Fire Department. He had the watery brown eyes of a doe in the forest, and in his one-size-too-big suit he looked more like prey than predator.
I knew different.
I’d been with him when my boss pointed the finger and Lieutenant Nathan Lazenby, one of the city’s top homicide cops, slapped on the cuffs. Nobody would have mistaken Sendak for prey then.
When I was little, my father made me help him drag a badger out of its burrow near our...
About the Author-
STEPHEN SPOTSWOOD is an award-winning playwright, journalist, and educator. As a journalist, he has spent much of the last two decades writing about the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the struggles of wounded veterans. His dramatic work has been widely produced across the United States. He makes his home in Washington, D.C. with his wife, young adult author Jessica Spotswood.
Reviews-
March 1, 2022
In their second outing (following Fortune Favors the Dead), private eye Lillian Pentecost and assistant sleuth Willowjean Parker head south to investigate the stabbing death of someone from Will's circus days, hopeful that they'll clear her old knife-throwing mentor's name in the process. As Watsonian chronicler to the brilliant Pentecost, Parker is the point-of-view character, and while she sees a lot, the well-plotted solution should satisfy genre fans with surprise payoffs to subtle setups. Narrator Kirsten Potter supplies the perfect voice as wryly assertive Will, for an overall engaging listen offset by one or two clownish accents nevertheless suited to the postwar showbiz setting. Her Pentecost, too, fits the character's cerebral composure while keeping her down to earth. A spectacular series encore and affectionate, yet unromanticized, tribute to the traveling Big Top, this soft-boiled historical mystery features female investigators who provide positive representation for folks with disabilities (Pentecost has both a prosthetic eye and MS) and bisexual women (via Parker's frank, frequently amusing inner thoughts about her love life). VERDICT A recommended purchase, especially for libraries where the first book circulated well.--Lauren Kage
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
September 20, 2021 Set in the summer of 1946, Spotswood’s twisty follow-up to 2020’s Fortune Favors the Dead sends New York PIs Lillian Pentecost and Lillian’s assistant, Willowjean Parker, to a traveling circus performing in rural Stoppard, Va., where Ruby Donner, the tattooed lady, has been murdered. The case is a personal one for Parker, who not only worked in the same circus before landing a job with Pentecost but considers many of the performers as family. Parker credits Ruby with saving her life and vows to find her killer. As Pentecost struggles with multiple sclerosis, Parker is faced with numerous potential killers, including her old mentor, Valentin Kalishenko, a hard-drinking knife thrower, as well as with more than a few skeletons from Ruby’s shadowy past. Though the focus on period details and hard-boiled atmospherics isn’t quite as strong as in the previous book, Spotswood’s ability to subvert genre tropes with intriguing and distinctive characters (Parker is openly bisexual at a time when that was risky) make this whodunit a delightfully unusual read. Readers will look forward to Pentecost and Parker’s further adventures. Agent: Darley Anderson, Darley Anderson Literary.
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