DEAD IN THE FRAME

All the detective work that would normally fall to Lillian Pentecost has to be done by her sidekick, Willowjean Parker, for the worst of all possible reasons.

Returning in October 1947 from three weeks in the Catskills with her lover, pulp fiction writer Holly Quick, Will learns that Lillian’s been arrested for the murder of Jessup Quincannon, a philanthropist/collector known as “a connoisseur of crime and murder,” whose latest Black Museum Club soiree was muted by the discovery of his corpse moments after Lillian arrived, then fled the scene. If the cops needed any further encouragement to pull her in, it would’ve been supplied by the news that her gun fired the bullet that killed her host. While Lillian, who has multiple sclerosis, gets repeatedly pranked by some unknown party at the Women’s House of Detention, Will goes on offense, doing whatever she can to sow doubt by implicating the other guests that night, who include, among others, “the embezzling lawyer; the money-hungry preacher’s wife; the spurned lover; and the gunman on the run.” Her hopes rise when she’s visited by someone who admits he planted the evidence that incriminates Lillian and will straighten it all out if she’ll only solve the murder of his wife, which the police maintain was suicide. But they’re dashed again when the blackmailing client is killed himself before either he or Will can deliver. As usual, Spotswood is more interested in piling on the complications than in resolving them, and the denouement is just one darned thing after another. But (spoiler alert) the jury takes only 11 minutes to acquit Lillian; they don’t even hem and haw long enough for the free lunch.

A lively period frolic whose hardboiled femmes tackle a Golden Age puzzle.