Murder Under Her Skin

This is the Sequel to Fortune Favors the Dead by Stephen Spotswood. From the publisher, "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. " Ruby Donner, the Tattooed Woman, took Willowjean into the family of Hart and Halloway's circus when Will ran away from an abusive father. When the owner of the circus, diminutive Big Bob Halloway, pleads with them to find Ruby's killer, Will and her brilliant detective boss leave the Big Apple and head for...Stoppard, Virginia. Turns out that Ruby grew up in Stoppard and left just before graduating high school, never to return. In their efforts to prove the alcoholic knife thrower Valentin Kalishenko innocent, Ms. Pentecost and Will work to uncover who in town might hold an old grudge against Ruby and, in the process, uncover long-buried secrets of Ruby's. Will gets involved with Ruby's old boyfriend, now an amputee from the war who works as a policeman in town. There are several possibilities among local ne-er do wells, but the answer may indeed lie closer to Will's old home, the circus. 

Kirkus concludes that this second installment in the Pentecost and Parker series provides "Rich circus atmosphere and a satisfying puzzle." Booklist offers praise: "Will's slangy first-person narrative is captivating, and fans of circus life, such as it was, will enjoy this tale, as will followers of the 1940s hard-boiled detective genre, considerably enlivened here by having two no-nonsense women do the sleuthing." Publishers Weekly chimes in by concluding, "Though the focus on period details and hard-boiled atmospherics isn’t quite as strong as in the previous book, Spotswood’s ability to subvert genre tropes with intriguing and distinctive characters (Parker is openly bisexual at a time when that was risky) make this whodunit a delightfully unusual read. Readers will look forward to Pentecost and Parker’s further adventures. " Indeed I do.