The Disability Book Archive

[ID: A book cover. The background shows a city street at night. There are lights on in the windows, a car is below a lit streetlight, and there is a tall skyscraper in the far back. A large circular moon is behind all of this. In the foreground, two women some distance from each other. An older women with long white hair, a red backless dress and red pumps stands behind the car. A woman with short orange hair, a blue cap, a white shirt, blue pants and black shoes stands in the foreground with her hands in her pockets. They are facing each other. The title “Fortune Favors the Dead” is written in large capitals down the upper right side of the page. All of it is written in cream, except for “Dead” which is written in larger, red capitals. Underneath this, the author’s name “Stephen Spotswood” in smaller black cursive. /end]

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Content Warning:

• Violence
• Death
• Homophobia
• Murder
• Cancer
• Domestic Abuse
• Child Abuse

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Summary:

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.

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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Notes:

This is the first book in the Pentecost and Parker series.

There is an audiobook.

There is a kindle edition.

Narrator is a bisexual female with romantic and sexual attraction to another female character in the book, though the submitter said the relationship itself is “complicated”.

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Archivist Comments:

“I don’t usually enjoy mysteries but this one was whimsical, feminist, complex, and fun, and I loved the representation!”

-Submitted by anonymous

I’ve seen this described as both being “reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes and Watson” and a kin to “an Americanised Agatha Christie”.

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