Murder Under Her Skin

July 1, 2021

In his strong debut, 1940s New York-set Fortune Favors the Dead, journalist/playwright Spotswood introduced us to PI Lillian Pentecost and her assistant, Willowjean "Will" Parker. Here, they investigate when the Amazing Tattooed Woman of Hart and Halloway's Travelling Circus is stabbed in the back. The circus was Will's home for many years, the victim a friend, and main suspect Valentin Kalishenko the pro who taught Will how to throw a knife. As the case unfolds, they find themselves in a sleepy Southern town full of grudges.

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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.

September 15, 2021
A second case takes genius detective Lillian Pentecost and her sidekick, Willowjean Parker, from Brooklyn to Stoppard, Virginia, where Willow's reunion with the circus that once took her in is provoked by murder. Time was every kid dreamed of running away to join the big top, but Willow actually did it, escaping her abusive family to make a new home with Hart & Halloway's Traveling Circus and Sideshow. It's been four years since she bade the troupe farewell, but she still has fond memories of them in 1946, when a telegram from owner/ringmaster Big Bob Halloway asks her boss to come investigate the stabbing of Ruby Donner, the Amazing Tattooed Woman. It's a pleasure for Willow to rekindle her ties with Maeve Bailey, the All-Seeing Madame Fortuna, and Frieda, the Impossible Rubber Band Girl, who was more than a friend to Willow back then. But she's not happy to make the acquaintance of the Amazing Annabelle, the ambitious new assistant to Nedley Johnson, the Great Mysterio, or to regard any of her old friends as suspects, or especially to hear that Stoppard Police Chief Thomas Whiddle has arrested her old mentor, knife-thrower Valentin Kalishenko, who supplied the weapon someone stuck in Ruby's back. Lillian, who has a glass eye and multiple sclerosis, pieces together some unlikely clues--the recent decease of the boa constrictor Bertha in Ray Nance's House of Venomous Things, the persistent hints of heroin, the unexpected subject of Ruby's very first tattoo--to produce a surprising solution. Rich circus atmosphere and a satisfying puzzle.

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October 15, 2021
"Circus girl, circus killer. Cut and dried." Not so fast! Lillian Pentecost, "New York City's preeminent lady gumshoe," and her assistant Willowjean "Will" Parker return (after the award-winning Fortune Favors the Dead, 2020) and head south after a performer is murdered at the circus that Will called home for many years. The ""All-Seeing Madame Fortuna"" never saw it coming. The ""Amazing Tattooed Woman,"" Ruby, was found with a knife wound in her back and the prime suspect, naturally, is the show's knife-thrower. But it turns out that the circus has pitched its tents in Stoppard, Virginia, which is where Ruby grew up, and, despite a happy small-town fa�ade, its post-WWII cheeriness has its dark side, and its past holds some surprising secrets. Will finds herself dodging bullets, fists, and firebombs to get to the truth of who killed the proud bearer of more than 300 tattoos. Will's slangy first-person narrative is captivating, and fans of circus life, such as it was, will enjoy this tale, as will followers of the 1940s hard-boiled detective genre, considerably enlivened here by having two no-nonsense women do the sleuthing.

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