Puzzled To Death Parnell Hall by Parnell Hall 9780553581461, 0553581465 instant download after payment.

In this third book of a well-received series (Last Puzzle and Testament, etc.), we have puzzles within puzzles in every sense of the word. Cora Felton, hailed as the "Puzzle Lady" for her prowess in constructing newspaper crossword puzzles, in truth knows nothing about crosswords. She receives the adulation of the puzzle world while her niece, Sherry Carter, does all the work. Cora's real love is solving murder mysteries in the Murder She Wrote vein. When the townspeople of Bakerhaven, Conn., decide to hold a crossword puzzle contest, after much debate over the propriety and usefulness of such a contest, Cora, who's cohost of the event, gets her chance to do some sleuthing. The town tart turns up dead on her kitchen floor, and soon two more murders follow. What ties all the murders together is that a crossword puzzle (or in one case, a doodle) is found with each body. The author provides us with two crosswords from the contest to solve, though these have only a tenuous connection to the murders. Poor Chief Harper of the Bakerhaven Police Department, Cora's foil, is somewhat befuddled ("Tell me again why she couldn't have done it," he asks her). Numerous suspects, both out-of-town contestants and locals, keep the action moving. The dust jacket, depicting a subtly sinister autumnal landscape with a crossword-grid sky, elegantly conveys the novel's contents.

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Cora Felton, now of Bakerhaven, Connecticut, is known as the Puzzle Lady, and her smiling visage adorns her crosswords. In real life it is her niece, Sherry, who is the cruciverbalist (maker of crossword puzzles); Cora is much married and too chummy with the bottle, but she does have a nose for murder. When she's roped into hosting a charity crossword competition, she's terrified she'll be unmasked. Then the murder of a local woman who was cheating on her spouse, followed by the murder of the woman's nosy neighbor, becomes connected to the competition, and it takes all Cora's wiles to connect the clues. Sherry's relationship to the local newspaperman has some rocky if contrived moments. Although the crosswordiana remains engaging, the deadpan deception, the lighthearted trashing of suburbia, and Cora's personal flaws are wearing just a wee bit thin. GraceAnne DeCandido
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