As narrators go, Willowjean "Will" Parker ranks right up there with Flavia de Luce and Scout Finch. Motherless as a child, wise beyond her years.

As stories go, "Fortune Favors the Dead" pays homage to Nero Wolfe. Will is Archie, the wise cracking sidekick who runs the office, has an eye for the ladies and lives in a big house in New York City with a brilliant employer who has physical limitations.. The head of detectives visits the house regularly. There's a live-in gourmet cook.

As mysteries go, this one has appealing elements. Will's circus background. New York in the 1940s. Seances.

As sequels go, let's hope Stephen Spotswood receives the encouragement he deserves.

I hope this is the first in a new series.! A former young female cirky (circus) jack of all trades is thrown into a crime investigation with a well-known older female detective. Using young pluck and old methodology, the two solve a murder in post WWII New York City. Interesting cast of characters and twisty plot keeps the reader guessing.

Well constructed mystery with multiple levels and twists. They final resolution of the core mystery is not what I would have expected - a more complex web of interconnected plots that keep one engaged. The reader does not know until the last chapter what the underlying mystery really is. I quite liked the interesting and diverse cast of characters. There was an Agatha Christie - like feel to the plot lines. Many clues are dropped throughout the story finally coming together at the end in ways that I could not see clearly as I read along. Looking back, they were all there but place well enough to not lead you to the denouements until you are there. An enjoyable read for anyone who likes mysteries, especially those with a nice level of diversity rather than the traditional genre. One weakness in the book was they overlay of the "hard-boiled" detective genre. It detracted from the over flow rather than added to it. The strong female characters in a novel set in the time frame it was, was a big plus for me in being attracted to the book. There was plenty of "meat" in the strong female characters without it.

This is a fantastic debut. Willowjean Parker is an engaging and funny narrator for the mysteries she and Lillian Pentecost solve together. I was sucked into this book from the first pages and didn't want to put it down. It's not often to find queer characters at the heart of books set in the 1940's and it was wonderful to see them here.

Fortune Favors the Dead by Stephen Spotswood, 336 pages

Willowjean Parker is a circus roadie when she meets esteemed detective Lillian Pentecost in a New York junkyard. Soon, Will, as she prefers to be called, is Ms. Pentecost's right-hand woman, solving crimes and helping out other women on a regular basis. In 1945, three years into their partnership, Will and Lillian get a cracker of a case: a rich widow is murdered at her own Halloween party, and friends in her social circle are convinced it was the ghost of her late husband that killed her. Will and Lillian are sure that's not the case, but their investigation does include a surprisingly convincing medium who happened to be at the party, so who knows?

There's something of a gender-swapped Sherlock situation going on with this tale, a feeling that didn't leave me despite all the obvious differences (circuses, Ms. Pentecost's battle with MS, her queer sidekick). I enjoyed the two protagonists, as well as their fortune-telling nemesis, and the mystery was certainly a good one. If nothing else, read it for Will's distinctive storytelling style.

(NOTE: The following review will appear at CriminalElement.com the week of the title's publication.)

Fortune Favors the Dead opens with a real corker: “The first time I met Lillian Pentecost, I nearly caved her skull in with a piece of lead pipe.”

And, BAM!—we already know we’re in for a thrilling ride.

It’s 1940’s New York, and our heroes are an unconventional pair. For starters, they’re not heroes—they’re heroines. Narrator Willowjean “Will” Parker is in her early twenties, a former circus performer, and queer. She’s the right-hand woman/protégé/nursemaid to the city’s foremost private detective: Lillian Pentecost, a genius in a three-piece suit who’s fighting not just the city’s criminal element but her own body thanks to multiple sclerosis.

The two meeting has a touch of destiny to it: just as Pentecost begins to find her career affected by her diagnosis, along comes a clever girl tailor-made for her work.


“You’ve got to take something into account. The previous five years of my life had been spent crisscrossing a big swath of the country, cooped up in trailers and truck beds, and pursuing a rather unique education. That education definitely did not include the regular consumption of New York’s newspapers.
If you’re thinking: How could this girl not know who Lillian Pentecost is? The most famous woman detective in the city and possibly the country. The woman who tracked down the murderer of Earl Rockefeller. Who discovered the identity of the Brooklyn Butcher. Who Eleanor Roosevelt herself turned to when someone tried to put the squeeze on.
All I can say is this: I can pick a lock blindfolded, walk a wire twenty feet in the air without a net, and wrestle a man twice my size into submission. How about you?”


From Parker and Pentecost’s dramatic meeting, we’re thrown into one of their most memorable cases.

The wealthy Collins family has had a very bad year. First their patriarch, Alistair, ate his gun in his own study. And now, during a Halloween party and séance, matriarch Abigail has been murdered in that same, locked room.

The Collins heirs—twins Rebecca and Randolph—and their godfather, longtime family friend and business partner Harrison Wallace, wish to hire Pentecost to find the culprit.

But, ultimately, it’s not the offered money nor the locked room mystery that convinces Lillian to take the case; it’s the connection to a certain psychic medium.

Ariel Belestrade, the sophisticated spiritual advisor to the Upper East Side, has been on Pentecost’s radar since the night she and Will met. She’s connected to far too many deaths, disappearances, and shady goings-ons, and Lillian is determined to a) find out why and b) prove it to the police.

But it won’t be easy, especially during a case that seems designed to baffle, where the murder weapon was a crystal ball and the one who may have had the strongest motive is no longer among the living…


“Just tell her,” Rebecca demanded, borrowing a little metal from my boss.
Still, Wallace hesitated.
“It’s going to get out eventually—you know that.” Rebecca turned to Ms. Pentecost, leaning in toward the big desk. “People already think they know who killed her.”
“You believe you know who killed your mother?”
“I didn’t say that. I just said people think they know.”
“Becca, please. Don’t be silly,” Randolph scolded.
“It’s what everyone’s whispering. They think it was our father.”
“I was under the impression your father committed suicide over a year ago,” Ms. P said. “Did your mother remarry?”
Rebecca shook her head. “Oh no. That’s who I mean. People think she was murdered by the ghost of our father.”


Fortune Favors the Dead, the first in what will hopefully be a long series, pays homage to several of the greats: the noir atmosphere and sensibilities of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, the pastiche of Sherlock Holmes (albeit the Elementary version of the character, where Pentecost’s hard genius is tempered by a sincere need to help the needy and Will is a queer, white, ex-carnie version of Joan Watson), and the labyrinthine mysteries of Poirot.

But while there are plenty of familiar flourishes and obvious inspirational threads, Fortune still manages to be refreshingly original and very much its own creature.

Much of this is thanks to its unique and vibrant narrator. Will Parker is relatably modern while still being an authentic product of her time. Her colorful background and snappy style of speaking (“A gaff watch. A fake, a phony,” she explains to Pentecost early in their acquaintance) certainly make her stand out from the crowd of typical gumshoes. Spotswood never plays her sexuality as a gimmick; it’s relevant to the plot and fundamental to the character, and underscores the fact that queer people have always existed, even in periods that have been frequently straight-washed by history books and the media.

And while the rest of the cast is populated by familiar, expected archetypes—the femme fatale, the mild-mannered professor, the spoiled rich boy, sleazy con artists, business tycoons, and brutes—Spotswood fleshes them out in fresh ways.

Fortune is a layer cake of a story; there’s a central murder investigation, yes, but Parker and Pentecost also divert their attentions in other directions. We spend plenty of time following their personal and professional paths, and much is made of how society demeans women and outsiders: the poor, the ill, minorities, the queer community. Power and its abuses looms tall over everything.

Spotswood’s meticulous historical setting is further spiced up with dashes of the supernatural thanks to Belestrade, and the waning glory days of the traveling circus via Will.

It’s no exaggeration when I say Fortune Favors the Dead is one of the most rewarding and entertaining books I’ve read in years, one that fully lives up to the promise of its synopsis. Every page—nay, every paragraph—is rich and compelling. This is a five course meal of a book you’ll devour in one or two sittings.

Put Spotswood on your instant-order list if you’re a fan of any of the following: historical fiction, noir mysteries, brain-teasers, or feminist and queer themes handled respectfully. When it comes to male authors penning feminist issues that ring true and female characters who are fully realized and complex characters, Spotswood joins Terry Pratchett at the very top of the list.

And if anyone’s the heir apparent to Phryne Fisher or Elementary’s Sherlock and Joan, it’s Parker and Pentecost. This is an adventure you’ll want to rave about to strangers on the streets. Personally, I’m already impatient for these ladies’ next case.

I am not an avid mystery reader, but the Girl in the Dragon Tattoo sort of turned me on to them, and I will admit I've been seeking them out more and more.

Fortune Favors the Dead, is a hat tip Sherlock and Watson, but that's where the comparison stops. This book held nothing back, it started with an unconventional main lead and it just kept going. Will Parker, a girl who ran away to join the circus took to the life like a fish to water. She wrung everything bit of knowledge out of the circus and that's what helped her land the job of a lifetime with an equally unconventional private detective. Will is the narrator, but this is more of her story than her trying to capture Lillian Pentecost's story, and I liked that bit. Often times in the buddy-detective stories its all about the uncanny crime solving ability of the detective and the narrator is just the sidekick along to witness the brilliance of the detective.

This was a welcome departure of that standard trope.

Will Parker was straight forward and easy going. No purple prose or over wrought descriptions. However the story could have been anchored a little more in the setting and the time. We don't get a lot of novels in the 1940s that aren't war stories or survivor diaries. It just seemed like surface descriptions of the setting and not from someone lived and breathed the 1940s New York.

The story did drag just a bit and maybe two of three chapters could have been taken out and the novel would still have flowed and gotten to its end just the same.

Overall this was an enjoyable read that I hope to see more from this duo in the future.