Pun Salad

This book made the NYT's list of The Best Mystery Novels of 2021. It is the sceond entry in Stephen Spotswood's "Pentecost and Parker" series; I enjoyed the first one quite a bit. Same here, with only one quibble, below.

The book is set in 1946. The narrator, Willowjean Parker (call her Will), is the Archie Goodwin-style assistant to Lillian Pentecost, a New York City private eye. This book takes them out of the city, down to small-town Virginia, where the circus Will worked at years ago (she ran away from home to join) has a spot of trouble. Ruby, the circus's tattooed lady, has been murdered with a knife in the back. Which makes the prime suspect Valentin, the circus's knife thrower. Who taught Will the tricks of the trade back in the day.

Can they clear Valentin's name and suss out the real culprit? Well, they have a lot of hurdles: the sheriff is pretty sure he's got the right guy, and has little patience with private investigators messing around his town. By sheer coincidence—or is it?—the circus is playing in the town Ruby grew up in, and left under unclear, possibly scandalous, circumstances years back. So not only are the circus folks possible suspects, so are the townsfolk.

I enjoyed it quite a bit. Will is an irreverent, wise-cracking investigator; Mrs. Pentecost has Sherlock-level powers of observation and deduction.

I promised one quibble, and here it is: as a narrator, Will has an unfortunate habit of not telling what she knows, when she knows it. Keeping the reader in the dark for a while, usually only a few pages.