Stephen Spotswood
Headline, 7 December 2023
Available as: PB, 384pp audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781035409495
I'm grateful to Headline for providing me with an advance e-copy of Murder Crossed Her Mind to consider for review.
I'm a bit behind with reviewing (the end of 2023 was pretty intense work-wise and we are in the middle of planning a house move) so only just catching up with the latest Pentecost and Parker mystery.
For those who haven't come across these books yet (and if you haven't, please go back and read them in order) Willowjean "Will" Parker and Lillian Pentecost solve crimes in postwar New York City. Will is a runaway who worked for a time in the circus: Lillian is the city's foremost private detective.
In Murder Crossed Her Mind, the two investigate the disappearance of Vera Bodine, a retired legal secretary who has a preternatural memory but has become a "shut in" - a hoarder who refuses to leave her apartment and lives surrounded by years of clutter. Bodine's only friend, a slippery defence lawyer who gave Lillian a hard time on the witness stand in an earlier book, begs the women to look for Vera but at first they're not inclined to accommodate him. In a slick opening section to the book, Will, suffering after being assaulted and Lillian, struggling with her MS, spend a gruelling 24 hours establishing that there is something to investigate - all of this absolutely top-notch procedural work, a joy to read, really.
If Bodine has suffered harm, it soon becomes clear that there may be many motives - Vera's prodigious memory may mean that she retains information from her legal career, but it also seems she assisted the FBI in hunting Nazi spies. She's dropped a hint that she may want to report a crime. And then there are other suspects, closer to home, like the mysterious buyer who wants to take over the apartment building...
Pentecost and Parker navigate all of this with aplomb, also negotiating their own ongoing cases running on from previous novels, some of which seem to pose threats that I'm sure will come back to bite them in future books. Will's assurance and independence continue to increase (as I noted in reviewing the previous book, Secrets Typed in Blood) but here she's brought down a notch or two by Lillian - I love the relationship between the two women, both strong and complex personalities, both pointedly not saying a lot that they might. Indeed I'll go further and say that for all the genuinely intriguing detective stuff, it's that relationship which is at the heart of these books. Spotswood is taking his time showing it evolve, and I am in no rush for that: I want to enjoy what happens at a decent pace (so while it was great to get two instalments in 2023, I'd prefer these books to continue at one a year!)
For more information about Murder Crossed Her Mind, see the publisher's website here.
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