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Verdict: A sharp, funny 1940s New York locked-room mystery with a knife-throwing bisexual narrator and a genuinely lovable detective duo, undercut — for this site’s readers — by a romance that is a side thread and a solution even one trade reviewer found anticlimactic.
Best for: Readers who want a queer historical whodunit with a big narrative voice and a found-family partnership at its centre, and who are happy for the romance to be a flirtation in the margins rather than the point.
Heat level: ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5 — closed door; flirtation and a kiss)
Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.8/5 — a 4.01 Goodreads average across 12,938 ratings, with almost no negative minority but very little romance)
Tropes: Locked-room mystery, detective and assistant, found family, bisexual narrator, séance and spiritualism, 1940s noir, disabled detective, forbidden flirtation with a suspect, gender-flipped Nero Wolfe, series opener.
Fortune Favors the Dead by Stephen Spotswood is the first Pentecost and Parker novel, a traditionally published historical mystery set in New York in 1945, where Lillian Pentecost — the city’s most famous woman detective, working through multiple sclerosis — and Will Parker, the circus runaway she hired three years earlier, take on a society murder staged like a ghost story, and where Will’s attraction to the dead woman’s daughter becomes the complication neither of them needs.
It has a 4.01 average across 12,938 Goodreads ratings, the 2021 Nero Award, and a stack of trade reviews that are mostly raves. The important thing to know before you start is not that readers disagree about quality — they largely don’t — but that this is a crime novel with a queer heart, not a romance. Both parts of that sentence are worth understanding.
What Is Fortune Favors the Dead About?
Fortune Favors the Dead is a historical detective novel written deliberately in the Rex Stout mould: a brilliant investigator who does her thinking at home, and a wisecracking assistant who does the legwork and tells the story. The 1945 setting brings the machinery you’d expect — wartime money, society families, spiritualist mediums, and a New York where a woman who wants another woman has to be careful about who is watching.
Will Parker is the narrator, and she arrives defined by what she lacks: formal schooling, family, and any polish at all. What she has is a circus education — knives, locks, sleight of hand — and a mouth that runs ahead of her. Lillian Pentecost assumes, correctly, that those skills are worth more than a résumé. The whole book is Will’s first-person account, which buys it its best asset, the voice, and its most common reader quibble: you only ever see Pentecost through Will’s eyes.
What Makes This Queer Historical Mystery Work
- Will Parker’s voice: The most-praised element by a distance. Readers call the narration funny, wry and unmistakably hers, and the reviews quote her lines more than they quote the plot.
- The partnership: Pentecost and Parker read as mentor and apprentice turning into family, and readers repeatedly name the duo, not the case, as the reason they kept going with the series.
- Casual, unapologetic queerness: Will is bisexual on the page, and reviewers value that the book neither hides it nor makes it a tragedy — while being honest that 1945 had consequences.
- Disability written into the detective: Pentecost’s multiple sclerosis shapes how she works rather than serving as backstory, and a recurring set of reviewers single this out.
- A classic puzzle box: Locked room, séance, crystal ball, a family full of secrets — the golden-age suspense furniture is all present, and Wolfe fans recognise it with pleasure.
Book Synopsis
Will Parker was throwing knives in a travelling circus when she saved Lillian Pentecost’s life, and Pentecost repaid the favour with a job. Three years later Will is the detective’s assistant, bodyguard and legs, living in the brownstone where Pentecost holds court, consults for free with women who have nowhere else to go, and manages an illness she refuses to let define her.
The case that lands on their desk belongs to the Collins family. A year ago, steel magnate Alistair Collins was found shot in his study, and the death was ruled a suicide. Now his widow, Abigail, has been found dead in the same room, in the same chair, struck down with a crystal ball on the night of a Halloween party at which a medium held a séance. The door was locked. Half of New York society is ready to believe a ghost did it, and the other half would prefer nobody asked.
Pentecost is hired to find out what happened, which means Will goes into the house — among the family, the staff and the spiritualist — to watch, listen and pick the locks nobody wants picked. It also puts her in the path of Becca Collins, the dead woman’s daughter: clever, grieving, reckless, and interested in Will in a way that is dangerous for both of them. The closer Will gets to Becca, the harder it becomes to keep her judgement clear, and the question underneath the whole investigation is whether the house’s secrets are the kind that got people killed.
My Review
The voice here is excellent, and I want to say that first because it is the reason this book works at all. Will Parker narrates like someone who learned English from carnival barkers and pulp magazines and then taught herself better, and Spotswood keeps that register steady for 300-odd pages without letting it tip into parody. She is funny, observant and a little defensive, and the book lets her be all three at once.
The other genuine pleasure is the partnership. Pentecost is written with real restraint — she is formidable, private and physically limited, and the book treats her illness as a fact of how she works rather than a plot device to be pitied. The warmth between the two women is the emotional spine of the novel, and it is a mentor-and-found-family warmth, not a romantic one. It is what readers carry into the sequels.
Where it struggles is less about craft than about architecture, and it helps to be clear that the negative minority here is unusually small — only about 3% of Goodreads ratings sit at one or two stars. The complaints that do recur are diffuse: a handful of readers wanted more of Pentecost on the page, a few found the first stretch slow to grip, and one lower-star reader said the investigation grew “fairly boring at times.” Kirkus is the sharpest critic, calling the solution anticlimactic and noting a run of stacked denouements at the end, plus period detail that wobbles. I think that is fair: the resolution is intricate rather than satisfying, and the book explains itself more than once.
The expectation to reset, for this site in particular, is the romance. Will’s attraction to Becca Collins is real, it is on the page, and it matters to the plot — but it is a subplot, it is chaste, and readers say so outright. If a sapphic love story is what drew you, recalibrate before you start; this is a mystery that happens to have a queer narrator. If a mystery with queer characters who are not punished for existing is what you have been looking for, this is exactly that.
My honest note: A four-and-a-half-star narrator in a three-and-a-half-star puzzle, with a romance that barely registers as one. If you need a love story at the centre, this will leave you hungry. If you want a voice and a partnership to follow for five books, start here.
| Element | In Fortune Favors the Dead |
|---|---|
| Central relationship | Will Parker & Lillian Pentecost — assistant and detective, platonic found family; Will & Becca Collins as a flirtation subplot |
| Core tropes | Locked-room mystery, detective and assistant, found family, bisexual narrator, séance, 1940s noir |
| Setting | New York, 1945 — a detective’s brownstone and a wealthy family’s house after a Halloween séance |
| Heat level | 1/5 — closed door; flirtation and a kiss |
| Series | Pentecost and Parker book 1 — case resolves; five books published, no sixth announced that I found |
| Content notes | Murder, gun and knife violence, a past suicide ruling, homophobic threats and harassment, references to domestic violence and child abuse, blackmail, chronic illness |
How Spicy Is Fortune Favors the Dead?
A 1/5, and that number is a description rather than a criticism. romance.io has no entry for this book at all — which tells you it is not being catalogued as romance — so the rating comes from reader reports. They agree: the attraction between Will and Becca runs as flirtation and tension, and one reviewer sums up the physical side as a single kiss. There are no sex scenes, and nobody I found describes the book as anything other than closed door.
The element worth naming in advance is not heat but hostility. Will is threatened with violence over her interest in Becca, and the book is honest about what queer desire risked in 1945. No reviewer flags anything graphic beyond the murder itself. If you want a low-heat period mystery with a sapphic thread, Even Though I Knew the End sits just above it at 2/5; if you want the romance brought forward, The Paying Guests is sensual where this is chaste.
Who Should Read This Book?
You’ll likely love it if: you read mysteries for the detectives more than the puzzle, you want a funny first-person narrator with a period voice, you like found family and mentor bonds, and you are happy with queer representation that does not require a romance plot.
You may want to skip it if: you want a lesbian romance with the relationship at its centre, you judge a mystery by the elegance of its solution, you have little patience for an explanatory final act, or period slang wears thin on you quickly.
In short: a terrific narrator and a partnership worth five books, in a mystery that is good rather than great and a romance that is barely there.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (September 2026)
There is no live moment around this book — it came out in October 2020, and it has no BookTok footprint I could find and no Reddit threads that turned up in searching. What it has instead is the slow compound interest of a traditionally published mystery series: 12,938 Goodreads ratings and 1,928 written reviews, a 2021 Nero Award for the best American mystery in the Nero Wolfe tradition, and a Book Marks trade tally of three raves, three positive reviews and one mixed. Publishers Weekly praised the characterisation, Library Journal called it light and breezy, and BookPage called it “as mysterious and fun a caper as you will ever read.” The fifth book reached paperback in January 2026, which is how new readers keep finding book one. The audiobook helps: Kirsten Potter narrates for Random House Audio, running 8 hours 31 minutes, and listeners praise her character voices and accents specifically.
Prefer audio? Listen to Fortune Favors the Dead on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.
Why readers love it (according to the discourse): Will Parker, first and most consistently — the voice is what reviewers name first, followed by funny, charming and fun. Then the partnership: readers describe the duo in found-family terms, and the Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin comparison comes up again and again, usually approvingly. The queer representation gets named as a reason to recommend it, and the Lesbrary called the pair a version of Holmes and Watson its reviewer didn’t know they needed. The disability representation draws a steady line of praise, as does the 1940s atmosphere. StoryGraph’s reader tags land on adventurous, mysterious and fast-paced.
What readers argue about and complain about: The complaints are quiet and scattered rather than loud and shared. First, Pentecost herself — a handful of readers wanted more of the title detective and fewer scenes of Will alone. Second, the opening: a few found the case slow to take hold before the momentum builds. Third, the solution, and here the trade reviews and the readers diverge: Kirkus calls it anticlimactic and over-explained, while the Goodreads majority calls it well plotted and fair to the reader. That is the genuine split, and it is a taste question — if you want a clean, surprising reveal, lean towards Kirkus; if you read for the ride, lean towards the readers. A last note for this audience: at least one three-star reviewer says plainly that there isn’t really a romance, and does not count it as a flaw. Neither should you, as long as you know going in.
The series question everyone should ask first: book one resolves its case fully; there is no cliffhanger. What makes this series unusual is that it gets better with readers as it goes: Murder Under Her Skin sits at 4.04, Secrets Typed in Blood at 4.15, Murder Crossed Her Mind at 4.22 and Dead in the Frame at 4.28 on Goodreads. Some of that is survivor bias, but it means book one is the weakest-rated entry, not the peak. If this one is merely good for you, the sequels are the reason to keep going.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Fortune Favors the Dead a lesbian romance?
No. It is a historical mystery with a bisexual narrator, and the attraction between Will Parker and Becca Collins is a subplot rather than the engine. Readers say plainly that there isn’t really a romance, and Goodreads shelves it as mystery and historical fiction first.
How spicy is Fortune Favors the Dead?
A 1/5. There are no sex scenes; readers describe the relationship between Will and Becca as flirtation and a kiss. romance.io does not index the book at all.
Is Fortune Favors the Dead a standalone?
The case resolves completely, so it reads as a standalone with no cliffhanger. It is also the first of five Pentecost and Parker novels, and each sequel is rated higher on Goodreads, reaching 4.28 for Dead in the Frame.
Do I need to read the Pentecost and Parker books in order?
Start here. Each book has its own case, but this one shows how Will came to work for Lillian Pentecost and establishes the partnership the later books continue.
Is there an audiobook?
Yes. Kirsten Potter narrates it for Random House Audio, running 8 hours 31 minutes, and listeners single out her character voices and accents.
Did Fortune Favors the Dead win any awards?
Yes. It won the 2021 Nero Award, which honours the best American mystery written in the tradition of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories.
If You Loved Fortune Favors the Dead, Read These Next
The closest match on this site is Even Though I Knew the End, which puts a sapphic private investigator in 1930s Chicago noir and leans much harder into the love story. If the period crime and the danger of queer desire is the draw, The Paying Guests moves the violence to 1920s London and makes the relationship the centre. And for a country-house murder with an actual sapphic romance at its heart, Proper English trades the brownstone for a 1902 shooting party.
For more in this register, browse our lesbian mystery and thriller books guide or the full Book Reviews collection.
The Bottom Line
Fortune Favors the Dead sets out to give Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin to two women in 1945 New York, and it largely pulls that off. Will Parker is one of the best narrators in queer crime fiction, the partnership with Pentecost is warm without being sentimental, and the book lets a bisexual heroine exist without punishing her for it. It is also a mystery whose solution lands with less force than its setup, a first act that takes its time, and, for readers of this site, a romance that never becomes more than a thread. Whether it is worth it depends on what you came for — but if a voice and a detective partnership are enough, it is the start of a five-book series that only climbs. Check Fortune Favors the Dead on Amazon →
The Eikna Overall Ranking
On the Eikna scale, Fortune Favors the Dead ranks as a voice-driven queer historical mystery — witty and warm, limited as a romance by design, and best approached for Will Parker and the partnership rather than the love story or the puzzle.
The Evidence Scorecard
Overall ★★★★☆ 3.8/5
- ✓ 4.01 average across 12,938 Goodreads ratings
- ✓ Only about 3% of ratings at one or two stars
- ✓ 2021 Nero Award and mostly trade raves
- ✓ A mystery first, romance a side thread
Romance ★★★☆☆ 2.8/5
- ✓ Will and Becca’s attraction is real
- ✓ Danger of queer desire in 1945 adds tension
- ✓ Bisexual narrator, never punished for it
- ✓ Readers say there isn’t really a romance
Characters ★★★★☆ 4.4/5
- ✓ Will Parker is the most-praised element
- ✓ Pentecost’s MS shapes how she works
- ✓ Found-family partnership carries the series
- ✓ Some readers wanted more Pentecost on page
Writing ★★★★☆ 4.1/5
- ✓ Wry, funny first-person period voice
- ✓ Publishers Weekly praised the characterisation
- ✓ Atmospheric 1940s New York detail
- ✓ Kirkus flags patchy period detail
Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 3.7/5
- ✓ Mentor bond gives it real warmth
- ✓ Homophobic threats carry actual risk
- ✓ Grieving family makes the case personal
- ✓ Puzzle mechanics cool the final act
Heat Level ★☆☆☆☆ 1/5
- ✓ Closed door throughout
- ✓ Flirtation and a kiss, per readers
- ✓ No entry on romance.io
- ✓ Low heat by design, not a flaw
Ending ★★★★☆ 3.6/5
- ✓ Case fully resolved, no cliffhanger
- ✓ Goodreads majority calls it fair and satisfying
- ✓ Sets up the partnership for book two
- ✓ Kirkus calls the solution anticlimactic
Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 4.2/5
- ✓ Voice rewards a second pass
- ✓ Kirsten Potter audiobook, 8 hours 31 minutes
- ✓ Sequels climb to 4.28 on Goodreads
- ✓ Known solution blunts a mystery reread
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