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Dead in the Frame: A Pentecost and Parker Mystery - Softcover

Buch 5 von 5: Pentecost and Parker Mysteries

Spotswood, Stephen

 
9780593687123: Dead in the Frame: A Pentecost and Parker Mystery
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593687124 ISBN 13: 9780593687123
Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

“I adore Spotswood’s series. . . Start here, then work your way through the earlier books.” –Sarah Weinman, The New York Times

Wealthy financier and connoisseur of crime, Jessup Quincannon, is dead, and famed detective Lillian Pentecost is under arrest for his murder. Willowjean “Will” Parker knows for a fact her boss is innocent. She just doesn’t know if she can prove it. With Lillian locked away in New York’s infamous women’s prison, the House of D, Will is left to root out the real killer. Was it a member of Quincannon’s murder-obsessed Black Museum Club? His jilted lover? Or the mob hit-man who disappeared just after the shots were fired? 

With the city barreling toward the trial of the century, Will is desperate to get her boss out from behind bars before her reputation is destroyed. Because the House of D is no kind place, especially for a woman with multiple sclerosis. Or one with so many enemies. Lillian needs to survive long enough to take the stand. With time running out on both sides of the prison walls, Will and Lillian must wager everything to uncover who put their thumb on the scales and a bullet in Quincannon’s head. Before Lady Justice brings her sword down, ending Pentecost and Parker's adventures once and for all.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

STEPHEN SPOTSWOOD is an award-winning playwright, journalist, and educator. As a journalist, he has spent much of the last two decades writing about the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the struggles of wounded veterans. His dramatic work has been widely produced across the United States, and he is the winner of the 2021 Nero Award for best American mystery. He makes his home in Washington, DC with his wife, young adult author Jessica Spotswood.

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Chapter 1

“Grimm knew something was wrong even before he turned on the light. It was the smell. Burnt powder and wet copper and that particular rot you get only with something that used to be a human being. He’d smelled it plenty in the war. In the moment before he flicked the switch, he said a silent prayer.

“Please don’t let it be one of my friends this time.

“The bare bulb in the office ceiling ignited and Grimm closed his eyes. Too late. That split second had already been burned into his mind, so he opened them again.

“Another prayer unanswered.

“ ‘Aw, Briggsy.’

“His partner was slumped over his desk, right arm dangling at his side, gun hanging from his fingers. The blood sprayed across the threadbare carpet, almost to the door.

“No, Grimm thought. All the way to the door. There were flecks of red speckling the pebbled glass. One thick spot dotted the second i in Investigations.

“ ‘That’s a keeper,’ Briggs would have said.

“Something inside Grimm lurched, and he couldn’t tell if it was his stomach or his heart. He didn’t have time for either to settle. With insides squirming, he stepped forward to examine his dead partner.

“He reached toward Briggs’s head but stopped. What about fingerprints?

“Hell, he thought. It’s my office. My prints are everywhere. Besides, he wanted to see Briggs’s face.

“He gently tilted that cinder-­block head to the side.

“If not for the entry hole above his right ear, it could have been any other Friday night at the bar. Briggs after one whisky too many, laying his cheek against the liquor-­stained wood and telling the bartender, ‘Don’t worry, I ain’t sleeping. Just cooling this side of my face.’

“It could have been the night that Grimm had sat down next to him and started talking about what to do now that their respective careers as police officers were done—­Grimm because of his tongue, Briggs because of his fists. At some point, Grimm brought up, so casually and spontaneously, how there were a lot of private operators working the city.

“ ‘You think we should be private dicks?’ Briggs asked. ‘Those guys are assholes, Danny.’

“ ‘Yeah, but they get paid good money to be assholes.’

“Now he was dead, and one way or another it was Grimm’s fault.

“He tilted his friend’s head back. Gently, like he didn’t want to wake him. As he did, he noticed there was a sheet of paper in the typewriter. He leaned in and read.

“Danny,

“I’m tired of the scramble. Tired of working to make things right. There ain’t no getting back to even in this world and I’m done trying.

“Goodbye. I’m sorry.

“Briggs

“Briggs had said something like that to him just last week. The lunk could get real maudlin when the drink got on top of him.

“A car horn sounded somewhere on the street outside, and Grimm snapped to. How long had he been standing in here, leaning over a dead man?

“He should call the cops. They’d come, all right. Probably in record time. Suicide note or not, they wouldn’t pass up a chance to get Daniel Grimm in a box.

“No, he had things to do.

“He opened the battered filing cabinet and retrieved the file on Zachary Boon. Inside were the notice of receipt for Lydia Boon’s check, the photo, and the blackmail note.

“The cops would get a real kick out of the photo. Probably pass it around the station house. Grimm figured Lydia Boon had had enough heartache.

“He rolled up the file and slipped it inside his jacket before retrieving the .45 he’d taped behind the filing cabinet. Briggs had said it was a clean piece, and Grimm had no reason to doubt him.

“With what he figured was his last look at his partner, Grimm left the office, closing the door softly behind him, then moved to the back stairs. He knew a bar about twelve blocks south where he could find a quiet corner to think.

“Think about who might have murdered his partner.”

Holly paused then added, “That’s the end of the chapter. What do you think?”

“I think the same thing I thought the first time I read it,” I told her. “It’s a knockout. I don’t know what you’re worried about.”

I tried to see what her face was doing, but that was tough to do while driving. We were on a particularly curvy stretch of highway, and while the Packard handled smoothly—­it was a ’47 model and barely off the assembly line—­I could only account for my own steering. It was mid-­October and the leaves had changed, so a lot of drivers had their eyes on the trees instead of the blacktop.

We’d spent the last three weeks sharing a Catskills cabin. Holly to finish her novel, me to keep her occupied between chapters. No phone, no newspapers, no nosy neighbors wondering who those two women were from New York City. Sisters? Cousins? Do cousins kiss like that in New York?

A lot of occupying got done.

Now we were on our way back, my first-­ever vacation complete, and Holly’s first novel in the books, so to speak. The finished product sat in her lap—­a stack of 247 typewritten pages held together with a binder clip. She’d typed “The End” only two nights before and had proclaimed it “not bad.” Which is the highest praise she ever heaped on herself.

“I’m worried it’s too easy,” she said. “When you get to the end of that chapter and Dan Grimm tells you it’s a murder, how surprised are you?”

“At this point, not at all.”

“Will, be serious. How surprised were you the first time?”

“I don’t know if I’m the best gauge to use,” I said. “I do this for a living, after all. I have an eye for clues.”

“The people who read this will have read a hundred mysteries like it,” she reminded me. “They’ll have an eye, too.”

“Why don’t you save all the copyediting questions for Marlo and Brent? They know this stuff better than I do. The fictional variety, I mean.”

Marlo and Brent Chase were the owners of Strange Crime Press and Holly’s novel was their third book out of the gate, the first two being collections of short stories from their now-­defunct Strange Crime magazine. Holly also shared their bed on some nights when she wasn’t sharing mine.

If you’re wondering how that kind of setup works, the answer is an orderly calendar and an open mind.

“I want to know your opinion precisely because you have real-­world experience,” Holly explained. “Also, Marlo and Brent have been editing my work for so long, I worry they’ve gotten a little blind to my tricks.”

“You have tricks? I know about that one where you take my necktie and—­”

“Stop stalling. I promise I won’t be upset, whatever you say.”

That was a promise no one could keep. There was a direct line from those 247 typed pages straight to her heart, and I didn’t want to say anything that might leave a bruise.

“Okay,” I started. “Let’s break it down. Did I know it was a murder? Sure. But I was already leaning that way because it’s a crime novel. Then there’s the blood. His desk faces the...

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Verlag
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2026
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593687124
ISBN 13 
9780593687123
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
385
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