Puzzled to Death (Puzzle Lady Mysteries (Paperback))

Rating:
Summary: A funny mystery
Review: In cosmopolitan Bakerhaven lives renowned local celebrity Cora "the Puzzle Lady" Felton. Cora shares a home with her niece Sherry, who actually constructs the syndicated crossword puzzles. Cora does not have the slightest clue as to how to develop a crossword puzzle, but instead prefers applying her skills at solving homicides.

Bakerhaven hosts a charity crossword puzzle tournament and naturally everyone expects Cora to chair the event. The idea upsets Cora so much that she feels guiltily glad when someone kills Judy Vale. The prime suspect, Judy's spouse has an airtight alibi. When the victim's neighbor is also killed, Cora figures she has no time for across and down as she begins investigating a myriad of suspects with motives and opportunities.

A unique thing about a Parnell Hall tale is that the mystery is always interactive, as puzzles related to the plot are included throughout the story line. Each puzzle contains clues so that colorfully eccentric Cora and the audience can solve the who-done-it. Like it predecessors, PUZZLED TO DEATH adds an extra degree or two of fun to the mystery genre.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Puzzled to Death
Review: It seems a natural for Bakerhaven, Connecticut, to hold a charity crossword puzzle tournament--after all, the town is home to Cora Felton, the syndicated puzzle columnist beloved by millions as the Puzzle Lady. So why shouldn't Cora host the festivities & crown the winner? But Cora's got a stack of reasons not to attend as huge as the hangover she's nursing the morning the tournament opens. And when the demise of one of the celebrity contestants adds murder to the mix, Cora instantly proves that a juicy investigation is far more exciting than any tournament. A confounding confection, as deviously devised as it is irresistible to read, PUZZLED TO DEATH is as deceptive--and diverting--as the Puzzle Lady herself!

Rating:
Summary: passable puzzle
Review: Parnell Hall may be a candidate for an award in the most-unlikely-occupation-for-a-fictional-detective sweepstakes. Jockey detectives, bookstore-owner detectives, and gourmet-chef detectives pale by comparison to a bogus crossword puzzle-maven detective. His sleuth, Cora Felton, is a syndicated crossword puzzle composer -- or rather she poses as one. Her niece Sherry is the real composer; Cora just solves murders.

Cora is the best thing about this book. She is an unsentimental, tough-talking, hard-drinking, much-married old bird. The late Eileen Heckert would have been perfect to play her on screen. How she came to be the beloved Puzzle Lady is never explained.

Apart from Cora, "Puzzled to Death" is a pretty ordinary mystery. The locale is Bakerhaven Connecticut, as patently artificial as the village in Murder She Wrote. It boasts a daily newspaper, a paper mill, a medical examiner, two crossword puzzle experts, a passel of bed-and-breakfasts, but only one lawyer. All the residents seem to have surnames that originated in the British Isles; an unlikely circumstance even in the most remote corners of Litchfield County. Bakerhaven is about to host a charity crossword puzzle contest when a local housewife is murdered. Cora and the chief of police compete at solving the crime while most of the town is busy solving crossword puzzles.

Hall's dialogue is snappy and he offers some interesting insight into crossword puzzle composition and contests, but he violates the rules of the classical murder mystery in his denouement. My overall reaction is ehhhh!

Rating:
Summary: A decent mystery, but Cora needs a 12-step program
Review: The third book in Parnell Hall's series of crossword mysteries finds Cora Felton, the public face of the syndicated Puzzle Lady newspaper column, roped into co-hosting a crossword puzzle tournament in her adopted home town of Bakerhaven, Connecticut. The brains behind the charity tournament, and Cora's co-host, is the smug and pedantic crossword constructor Harvey Beerbaum, also a Bakerhaven resident. (How many professional cruciverbalists, one wonders, can one small town realistically boast of?) Throughout the book Harvey seems ever more interested in having Cora make a display of her puzzle-solving prowess, which leaves her suspicious: does Harvey know that Cora is only acting as the front for the Puzzle Lady operation, and that her niece Sherry is the talent of the outfit?

Added to the personal dramas among the series' regulars is, of course, a rash of murders, all seemingly connected to the crossword tournament--just the thing to rouse Cora from her usual state of insobriety and set her sleuthing. Puzzled to Death is a decent addition to the Puzzle Lady books, offering a complex mystery as well as several puzzles for the reader to solve along with the book's principals. But it remains a shame that Cora, an otherwise intelligent and likeable character, is so unapologetically attached to her self-destructive habits. Clever and engaging on the page, she would in the real world have about her the stench of a habitual smoker, and the smoker's rasping cough and abbreviated life expectancy, and she would--if she were not currently involved in a murder investigation (and how often can a layman count on that unlikely distraction?)--very likely be plastered. Miss Felton should lose the liquor and tobacco so she can be around to amuse fans with her amateur detecting for many years to come.