Secrets Typed in Blood: A Pentecost and Parker Mystery

It’s 1947 in Spotswood’s strong third mystery featuring Lillian Pentecost, “the greatest detective in New York City,” and her assistant, Willowjean “Will” Parker (after 2021’s Murder Under Her Skin), and the duo’s newest client, Holly Quick, arrives with a particularly knotty problem. “Somebody is stealing my murders,” Holly declares. A prolific writer for a pulp magazine called Strange Crimes, she’s certain that someone is using the details in the stories she pens under the name Horace Bellow as the basis for three recent murders. Indeed, the descriptions of a hanging in Stuyvesant Square, a stabbing in Sunnyside, and a suspicious death at an antique shop on the Upper East Side all closely match her stories. Holly wants the detectives to investigate, but without tipping their hand to the cops, as it seems she has some secrets of her own to protect. Spotswood plays fair with readers in a complex plot offering plenty of vivid characters, clever dialogue, and plausible suspects. Pentecost and Parker are a great crime-fighting partnership whose popularity is bound to increase. Agent: Darley Anderson, Darley Anderson Literary. (Dec.)