Fortune Favors the Dead (Pentecost and Parker #1)

The idea of a distaff New York City detective team echoing the classic Wolfe/Goodwin pairing was appealing. The characters were well thought out and reasonable well developed – almost as well as Stout did with the folks who populated the stories he told so well. Unfortunately what starts strong fades as the story develops. Too much hunch playing, not enough reason, and too many short cuts toward the end. I hope the author keeps going and turns this into a series. It has tremendous potential and I’d like to see it realized.

I caught the blurb for this book months ago and bought it early because it looked like the type of book I’d like. And boy did I, like it. I hopr there are many many more to the series. Write quickly!

I often find that the first book in a series isn’t very good, and this one is no exception. The whole thing felt very mechanical. Kind of like reading an old fashioned comic book. One thing that really bugged me was the use o f “Ms”. ms was a term that did not come into use until twenty years later. Believe me, I am an old lady and I know!

I feel as though Fortune Favors the Dead should win some sort of special award. You see, it’s the first audiobook I’ve listened to that didn’t put me to sleep in under thirty seconds. Granted, I wised up and had my knitting needles busy while I was listening, but I think the book would have kept me awake regardless.

Stephen Spotswood has written an engaging story set in 1940s New York City that has a hint of noir, a dash of humor, and two unusual and mesmerizing characters in Willowjean “Will” Parker and her boss, Lillian Pentecost. It’s not often that you read a mystery that involves a female circus runaway and a middle-aged woman with multiple sclerosis and a glass eye. Will is the book’s voice, and that voice drew me right into the story with its sass and spark. She kept me listening as the story unfolded, and I didn’t even particularly mind that the identity of the killer wasn’t that difficult to deduce.

As a novice audiobook listener, it hasn’t taken me long to learn that the narrator has a lot to do with a book’s success. I found that the narrator of this book, Kirsten Potter, was perfect. Her Will was smart and sassy and her Lillian was calm and determined. She did a good job of creating different voices for all the characters even though I don’t find that to be a necessity. (Just don’t have a run-of-the-mill voice that drones.) In fact, I found Potter to be so good that Spotswood’s series is one that I’ll continue to follow in audiobook format. Now all I have to do is wait patiently for Pentecost and Parker to make another appearance.

Terrific novel and interesting lead characters. What I liked most were the private thoughts and lives of the main characters and how the author developed them over the course of the book. There was also a last-minute twist I never saw coming, which may indicate a continuation into the next novel in the series. Hope so!

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