The latest action-packed installment in the Nero Award-winning Pentecost & Parker Mystery series follows Lillian and Will tracking the suspicious disappearance of a woman who might have known too much. From the author of Fortune Favors the Dead and Murder Under Her Skin.
Vera Bodine, an elderly shut-in with an exceptional memory, has gone missing and famed detective Lillian Pentecost and her crackerjack assistant Willowjean “Will” Parker have been hired to track her down. But the New York City of 1947 can be a dangerous place, and there’s no shortage of people who might like to get ahold of what’s in Bodine’s head.
Does her disappearance have to do with the high-profile law firm whose secrets she still keeps; the violent murder of a young woman, with which Bodine had lately become obsessed; or is it the work she did with the FBI hunting Nazi spies intent on wartime sabotage? Any and all are on the suspect list, including their client, Forest Whitsun, hotshot defense attorney and no friend to Pentecost and Parker.
The clock is ticking to get Bodine back alive, but circumstances conspire to pull both investigators away from the case. Will is hot on the trail of a stickup team who are using her name–and maybe her gun–for their own ends. While Lillian again finds herself up against murder-obsessed millionaire Jessup Quincannon, who has discovered a secret from her past–something he plans to use to either rein the great detective in . . . or destroy her.
To solve this mystery, and defeat their own personal demons, the pair will have to go nose-to-nose with murderous gangsters, make deals with conniving federal agents, confront Nazi spies, and bend their own ethical rules to the point of breaking. Before time runs out for everyone.
Review:
Dear Stephen Spotswood,
This is a fourth entry in the adventures of Lilian Pentecost and Willowjean “Will” Parker. I initially picked the first book up because it reminded me of my very favorite comfort reads. Unfortunately, I don’t see myself rereading these books, but they are certainly very well written and I find myself picking up every new book, even if I do it with more and more worry every time because of the illness Lilian has and just because the books for me are getting darker and darker and that’s not quite what I want when I am picking up a mystery.
The blurb is surprisingly detailed, and as it states Lilian and Will take on a case of Vera Bodin, or more precisely her disappearance. Forest Whitsun becomes their client. Whitsun is a defense attorney who appeared in one of the previous books and once again as the blurb correctly states is not a friend to either Ms. Pentecost or Ms. Parker. I was surprised that they agreed to take on this case, considering who the client was, but I understood why they did it and it was interesting how Mr. Whitsun showed his human side to us, while at the same time not having a complete personality rebut. He became good friends with Vera Bodine, he worried about her and felt guilty that he did not do enough to help her in her living circumstances.
I actually think that Perseverance (Vera) Bodin was one of the most interesting characters in this book. Of course this is not the first mystery I have read where the author tries to humanize the victim of the crime and when I say humanize I only mean to portray them as human beings rather than as somebody who died in order for the detectives in the book to have something to do investigating their death. To me Vera came alive on those pages and I liked her very much and would have wanted to know her even better.
The investigation was great, very detailed, very thoughtful. I seriously did not care for the amount of rule breaking that our heroines did, but they managed not to step over my red line yet for fictional characters, so we shall see how things will develop from now on, because their world is certainly expanding and from something the author says at the end, probably will expand even more.
This author is actually very good with secondary characters. There were several in this book which were very interesting to me and very far from just being a place holder. The FBI agent, the mobster, some others were really interesting (not that I would want to know them in real life necessarily).
Also the book continues to have some call backs to the Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin series. But of course this went in a much darker direction already and is certainly not a fan fiction of the original books and I don’t need them to be that, but I can see some influences.
Oh, at the end the book has a cliffhanger. And usually I am super annoyed with the cliffhangers and yes, I had to roll my eyes a little bit at the author saying at the end “please not to hate him and there was no other way to do it.”
And I just cannot keep quiet in response to that, because I would not dream normally to give advice to a writer, but yes, there was *easily* a way to do it without a cliffhanger. Do I even need to say it? Their investigation is completed, Will leaves on vacation with Holly. That’s it, the end. The only reason to include the last chapter when something happens to Ms. Pentecost, which as far as we know has zero connection to what happened in this book, is to make it end with a cliffhanger, to keep the reader interested.
Having said that, I was honestly thinking whatever, first of all there was no immediate danger to her life and second of all I realized that I am consciously trying to restrain myself from being fully emotionally attached to her character.
Grade B.
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Sirius
Sirius started reading books when she was four and reading and discussing books is still her favorite hobby. One of her very favorite gay romances is Tamara Allen’s Whistling in the Dark. In fact, she loves every book written by Tamara Allen. Amongst her other favorite romance writers are Ginn Hale, Nicole Kimberling, Josephine Myles, Taylor V. Donovan and many others. Sirius’ other favorite genres are scifi, mystery and Russian classics. Sirius also loves travelling, watching movies and long slow walks.
