Dead in the Frame

Dead in the Frame (2025) Stephen Spotswood (Pentecost and Parker #5)

Set in NYC in 1947

This book picks up right where the previous left off–with Lillian Pentecost being arrested for murder.

The bylines changed and the adjectives got shuffled, but the tone across the board was: She probably did it. It was almost as bad as the arrest itself. Arrests could be undone. But once a story is read, you can’t yank it back out of readers’ heads.

Jessup Quincannon, rich man and all around creep, has been murdered and Lillian Pentecost has been framed for his death.

I looked at him with fresh eyes. Monster? Madman? He didn’t look like either, but they rarely do.

“So you decided to frame Lillian Pentecost? For what? Kicks?”

“I did it because I want her to investigate—”

Whatever he was about to say was cut off by the angry Scotswoman walking up and pointing a Winchester pump-action at his head.

Here, for the first time, we get Lillian Penetcost’s point-of-view, in her journal entries made from jail.

Trigger warning for non-descriptive mention of violence suffered by female prisoners by male guards and personnel.

Not only do we get to see some of the workings of her mind, but we see her interactions with her cell mate.

“Did the sclerosis do that?” he asked one day when I was cleaning my prosthetic eye.

I shook my head. “No. My eye was taken.”

“What do you mean, ‘taken’?”

“I mean a man removed it by force.”

He cringed, his hands moving as if to protect his own eyes.

And we see more of what life was like in the 40s for queer folk.

“That’s not bad. I can do six months. I hear it’s not a bad place in summer. Mind you, it’s December.”

“Dolly Klinghorn’s report clearly shows you did not instigate the assault.”

“Sure, sure. My lawyer introduced that report and they dropped the assault charge like that,” he said, snapping his fingers. “But they still got me for dressing like a man. Nothing to do about that one. My lawyer didn’t even try.”

My drawers had been turned out, as had my closet. Everything was in a heap on the bed: clothes, knives, the Colt, and the Browning. My tiny bookshelf had been emptied and the books left in a pile on the floor along with my collection of playbills.
…
In contrast, the copy of Vice Versa a friend had mailed me from L.A. in flagrant violation of the Comstock Act had been placed carefully on top of my dresser. It had been opened to a poem about two lovers holding hands while walking down the street. No one had scribbled “Dyke” across the page, but the message was clear enough: We know what you like, Parker. And we can put our hands all over it.

We also see Will starting to come into her own as an investigator as she is forced to run the case herself, with only minimal input from Pentecost, but he recognition that she doesn’t have to do it all on her own.

Quincannon is a horrible person, and the more you learn about him, the more you want his murderer to go free, if not for the fact that Pentecost will take the fall if the real murderer isn’t caught.

He believed that if you are the person being acted upon against your will, then you are weak. If you are weak, then you are not worth consideration.

That is very much the opposite of Pentecost’s work–and life, and the heart of these books–telling the stories of those who society either ignores or tries to subjugate.

And also that life can drive us to take steps that we might not otherwise take, and that we don’t know how to deal with, but that maybe, with grace, we can move past.

Or if not grace, than someone willing to look the other way.

Characters: Willowjean “Will” Parker, Lillian Pentecost, Eleanor Campbell, Holly Quick, Marlo and Brent Chase, Jessup Quincannon, Alathea, Silas Culliver, Forest Whitsun, Pearl Jennings, Valeria Lincoln, Dr. Ryan Backstrom, Max Roberts, Billy Muffin, Judge Martin Mathers, Reverend Timothy Novarro, Elaine Novarro, Victoria Pelham, Detective Donald Staples, Lieutenant Nathan Lazenby, Walter Beck, Susie Elizabeth Beck, Judge Hugo Creed, Dr. Olivia Waterhouse, Keith Bigelow, Doc Hubbard, Dr. Lydia Grayson, Dolores Klinghorn, Sam Lee, Mr. Levy, Adam Pentecost, Mrs. Pervis, Louis Ballard, Mrs. Priscilla Norton, Derrick Andrews, William Johnson, Junfeng Zhao, John Meredith

Cover design by Michael J. Windsor and Emily Mahon

Publisher: Doubleday

Rating: 8.5/10

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