A Clue for the Puzzle Lady

I love puzzles and I love books so a book about puzzles was always going to be a winner. I loved it. Still it wasn't without it's issues and I'm sure not everyone will enjoy it.

Cora was hilarious. She's such a nutter. I loved the whole cast of characters, Cora, Chief Dale Harper, Sherry and Aaron. The dialogue was fast and snappy with lots of word play. The murder itself wasn't terribly original - it was pretty obvious who the murderer was from the start but I did enjoy getting there. And there were a lot of laughs along the way. 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

A book with a lot of nice touches, not necessarily so much for cruciverbalists but for logophiles. The repartee between the niece and the reporter is handled expertly. The main character combines a very Miss Marple-ish character with the paradoxical habit of regularly going out on a bender, which makes an amusing mix. I didn't care for the ineptness of the police chief, and the subplot concerning him possibly losing his job comes across as something thrown in to fill space. On the other hand, the cold case subplot works really well, and the revealing of the murderer is paced nicely. I suppose if you must have a dramatic confrontation with weapons to finish a mystery, you must.

All in all, not a bad first series book. I'll get another one show more if I run across it, to see if it is the sort of series that gets better as it goes along. show less

First Line: The first clue came with a corpse.

Police Chief Dale Harper finds himself investigating his very first homicide when the body of an unknown girl turns up in the cemetery of the small town of Bakerhaven, Connecticut. A strange clue leads him to consult Bakerhaven's celebrity, Cora Felton-- otherwise known as the Puzzle Lady for her syndicated column of crossword puzzles.

That was Harper's first mistake because Cora's meddling drives him crazy and makes her niece, Sherry, want to rip out her hair. When another body turns up that hits close to home, Cora's got to put her puzzle-solving skills in high gear before she becomes the next victim.

Beware requesting books like this secondhand. If you're not lucky (like I wasn't), you'll show more get a copy of the book in which a previous owner has already worked the crossword puzzle... in ink. With that precautionary tale out of the way, let's get to the book.

While I didn't find myself solving the mystery and had to wait for the author to do it for me (a definite plus), there were things that bothered me about this first book in the series.

The fact that Police Chief Dale Harper kept returning to Cora and her niece for help was one of them. I could see it if they were giving him substantive help, but they weren't. This gave me the impression that Harper was, indeed, out of his depth.

The character of Cora Felton herself pushed one of my hot buttons. (I don't have many, so it can be dire if one of them is activated.) Her meddling was amusing, and it was fun to see her tie her niece, Sherry, in knots. I also liked Cora the cardsharp always trying to get a game of cards going, but... the woman is a person who drinks to excess then gets behind the wheel of a car and drives (weaves) her way home. That is my hot button, which has something to do with my having had an alcoholic in the family. That whole drunk thing just isn't funny to me. At. All.

Her niece, Sherry, is trying to take care of her aunt while she's avoiding an abusive ex-husband. Local journalist Aaron Grant takes a shine to the young woman, and their witty banter at first is fun, but it goes on way too long.

A Clue for the Puzzle Lady has a good mystery and very good pacing, but I had a few too many problems with the characters, and not all of those problems were personal. Of course, there is another way of looking at this-- if the characterizations weren't good, then these fictional people wouldn't get under my skin the way they did! show less

Cora Felton, the “puzzle lady,” an alcoholic, gambling, many-times married old lady has moved with her niece, Sherry Carter, to small town Bakerhaven, CN to avoid publicity. They have secrets: Sherry is avoiding her abusive ex-husband, Cora doesn't want her public to know the real her and Sherry is the real “puzzle lady.” When Police Chief Dale Harper finds what looks like a crossword puzzle clue in the pocket of a murder victim, he comes to Cora for help. So begins a tale of murder and deception. These three characters and a fourth, Aaron Grant, a young reporter on the local paper, are the regular characters in this series. I did not click with them but the mystery was OK. I will give this series another try since reviews say show more the series gets better. show less

I enjoy puzzles because what is a mystery if not a puzzle to be solved so when I ran across this series I decided it definitely was for me and that I'd start at the beginning. In this first of the series, the Puzzle Lady for the public world is Cora Felton, an elderly, grandmotherly type who is just what the syndicates want when they promote the "Puzzle Lady". But in fact, all the work is done by her niece, Sherry, who is trying to hide out from an abusive husband/ex-husband? and move on with her life. They settle in a small town in Connecticut and this is where our story begins.
I chuckled when the mystery started with the discovery of a dead body in the cemetery - how ironic! Not exactly the spot you think of for a murder. When the show more police chief starts the investigation (there are only 3 on the police force in this small town) by examining the pockets of the victim, he finds a scrap of paper that looks like a crossword puzzle clue. Not being particularly prepared for this type crime, Chief Harper turns to the Puzzle Lady to try to understand what the killer was trying to say with the clue.
Ms Felton has some vices which if known, could possibly end the Puzzle lady's syndications. Somehow Aunt Cora can smoke and drink and still manages to help the Chief Harper through the clues/nonclues and leads him to the solution with an amusing edge.
This cozy mystery is fun and entertaining and I'm definitely looking forward to more of the series. show less

A major subgenre of mystery fiction is the amateur detective, and within that is the amateur detective with some job that seems antithetical to being a master sleuth. In this case, it's a crossword puzzle editor, though the difference between an editor and constructor is not made clear in the novel. The mystery is OK but padded out. The characters are fine, if a bit exaggerated. The weakest point is the dialog. There are repeated passages of multi-page two-person dialog clearly meant to be repartee of the "His Girl Friday" sort, but they just annoying.

Your typical cozy mystery.

This book was a disappointment for me. I was looking forward to a tricky mystery based on crossword puzzles and instead I got a formulaic cozy mystery with one-dimensional characters. The only bright spot in a pretty bleak piece of fiction was Aunt Cora - the puzzle lady herself. She was pretty sharp for an old lady who walks around half-sozzled all the time. I don't recommend this series at all.