Murder Under Her Skin
Ratings7
Average rating4.1
15
Ratings7
Average rating4.1
Rex Stout meets Agatha Christie with a fresh twist in the new Pentecost and Parker Mystery, a delightfully hardboiled high-wire act starring two daring women sleuths dead set on justice as they set out to solve a murder at a traveling circus Someone’s put a blade in the back of the Amazing Tattooed Woman, and Willowjean “Will” Parker’s former knife-throwing mentor has been stitched up for the crime. To uncover the truth, Will and her boss, world-famous detective Lillian Pentecost, travel south to the circus where they find a snakepit of old grudges, small-town crime, and secrets worth killing for. New York, 1946: The last time Will Parker let a case get personal, she walked away with a broken face, a bruised ego, and the solemn promise never again to let her heart get in the way of her job. But she called Hart and Halloway’s Travelling Circus and Sideshow home for five years, and Ruby Donner, the circus’s tattooed ingenue, was her friend. To make matters worse the prime suspect is Valentin Kalishenko, the man who taught Will everything she knows about putting a knife where it needs to go. To suss out the real killer and keep Kalishenko from a date with the electric chair, Will and Ms. Pentecost join the circus in sleepy Stoppard, Virginia, where the locals like their cocktails mild, the past buried, and big-city detectives not at all. The two swiftly find themselves lost in a funhouse of lies as Will begins to realize that her former circus compatriots aren’t playing it straight, and that her murdered friend might have been hiding a lot of secrets beneath all that ink. Dodging fistfights, firebombs, and flying lead, Will puts a lot more than her heart on the line in the search of the truth. Can she find it before someone stops her ticker for good?
Reviews with the most likes.
3.5 stars. This was a serviceable enough mystery. It was pretty engaging while it lasted and had a pretty decent cast of characters. I just thought that the gimmick of it could've been better developed. The murder victim is our narrator Willowjean Parker's old friend from the circus she used to travel with before she left and found an alternative job as assistant to the detective Lillian Pentecost. Ruby Donner was hired by the circus for the number of tattoos she had inked on her body, but was discovered stabbed to death one night, and the only person with the biggest motive is the Russian knifethrower Val, who also happens to be Willow's mentor.
My issue with the gimmick of the story might be a spoilery so hidden under spoilers here: The title, “Murder Under Her Skin”, makes it sounds like Ruby's tattooes would play a big role in the resolution of the murder. Indeed, we do focus a lot on the various designs inked on Ruby's skin, especially since Will was offered the chance to dress her body for the funeral. In the end, there is only one clue to the murder tattooed on Ruby - the daisies on her chest, somehow alluding to a past pregnancy which only has a very, very slight connection to the bigger conspiracy that is unearthed at the end. For a book that pretty much references tattooing in its title, I would expect tattooes to play a much larger role somehow.
It was hard to rate this one. On one hand, it's a pretty solid mystery without being overly generic. On the other, it doesn't pack oomph-y plot twists that make a mystery truly hard to forget.
