“Fortune Favours the Dead”

“I went downstairs to call a man about a corpse” 

— Fortune Favours the Dead, p. 65

The hard-boiled detective was a particularly popular literary type in the 1920s through the 1940s. Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961), Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970), Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) and several others wrote about very colorful characters including Philip Marlowe, Mike Hammer, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Perry Mason, and The Continental Op. You may note that the most famous of this genre in its prime includes only men. Right!

Fortune Favours the Dead by Stephen Spotswood
Published 2020.
A much-appreciated Christmas gift from my sister.

Private detective Lillian Pentecost is a “lady gumshoe” in New York who has solved many cases that baffled the well-meaning but thick-headed police force. It's the 1940s, so she's special. She charges lots of money to her rich clients, and helps the poor ones gratis. In the first scene of Fortune Favours the Dead, Pentecost confronts a man with a gun. Fortunately, a circus girl named Willowjean Parker is on the scene and kills the gunman with a skillful throw of a knife — one of Parker’s many useful abilities that she picked up in the circus. 

Parker is the tough-talking narrator of the novel. We can tell she’s a tough-talking girl from her first meeting with Pentecost, which led to her being hired as Pentecost’s assistant, doing everything from stenography to dangerous pursuit of criminals. After introducing herself and her circus credentials, she jumps forward in time 5 years to her favorite case. This murder mystery is the gripping subject of the rest of the novel. Like the tough guys in classic detective fiction, she tolerates being beaten up, suspected, arrested, and questioned by the police; pursued romantically by individuals who were involved in the crimes, and being subject to plenty of criticism by her employer. She also eats in diners a lot -- egg salad sandwiches, roast beef sandwiches, and the like; also, Pentecost's cook creates very fine meals. Lots more hard-boiled stuff too. Like Nero Wolf's cook (to add another classic detective, with a strong resemblance).

Reading crime fiction of the hard-boiled sort is a favorite of Parker. She mentions many of the fictional detectives and also how she goes to newsstands and little bookshops to buy more novels, sometimes second-had for as little as a nickel. Clearly, she's basing her nonchalant hard-boiled style on these authors. In one case she even writes "I might have been playing at being the hard-boiled hero, but that's who she needed." (p. 259)

I enjoyed the semi-sarcastic style of this novel. Yes, it reminded me of Humphrey Bogart's portrayal of Sam Spade. My only criticism is that frequently, small details in the narrative were inappropriate for the era of World War II. Here's one example: there's a mention of "a better zip code," but zip codes were not introduced until 1963 (p. 52). Another example: an important character was a psychic who seemed to know more than she should about a number of people. Critically, she revealed many details about guests at the party where the murder took place; for example, she disclosed a woman guest's early and unannounced pregnancy. Parker figured out how the psychic knew this: she observed that the woman didn't join in drinking champagne. Alcohol avoidance in pregnancy, however, was not a recommended practice until the 1970s. (Pub Med confirms this timing in a review of attitudes towards alcohol in pregnancy.)

I also liked the very complicated plot with many twists and lots of action. The personalities of Pentecost, Parker, their clients, their suspects, and the people who help them are all very carefully and vividly defined. Suspense builds effectively, and the ending is satisfying. Of course I'm not going to give away anything about the plot or the perpetrators!

Review © 2022 mae sander.