Where ambulance chaser Stanley Hastings lives in real life New York. The Puzzle Lady series of books are set in the fictional town of Bakerhaven, Connecticut. Cora Felton is a celebrity in the crossword business, publishing crossword puzzles for major American newspapers as well as appearing on TV commercials for her cereal. She has been labelled as The Puzzle Lady. However, the fact is, Cora Felton is a lie. She cannot solve a crossword puzzle to save her life. The real Puzzle Lady is her niece Sherry Carter, who actually creates and publishes the puzzles but couldn't get the fame due to her young age. She uses her Auntie, who is older in age and is more believable to be a crossword compiler. This is a closely guarded secret and only the two of them and Sherry's friend, local reporter Aaron Grant know the true identity of The Puzzle Lady. Although Cora is useless at puzzles, she is a master of solving murders and helps the local police, much to their annoyance. Simply picture Cora Felton as Jessica Fletcher. However, unlike the cursed one and solver of all murders. Cora Felton is simply one who likes to drink heavily. smokes her head off and plays bridge at the local bar. The early books had Cora as a drunk but throughout the series she eases off the alcohol but continues to smoke to Sherry's annoyance. Bakerhaven is a small town and features a small police station which is headed by Chief Dale Harper (picture Ted Levine's Leland Stottlemeyer from the TV series Monk). In the first book he asks Cora to help with a murder case but in further books she pokes her nose into the murders with Harpers disapproval. The books have many regular characters. There is cruciverbalist Harvey Beerbaum who admires Cora's work. He doesn't know Cora is a fake and tries to wriggle out of situations where Harvey askes for her help. Becky Baldwin, the local lawyer and Aaron's former flame where Sherry has a small rivalry. Dennis Carter, Sherry's ex-husband, failed rock star who moves to Bakerhaven. Dr. Nathan Barley, the local medical examiner and Dan Finley who works with Dale Harper at Bakerhaven Police.
With the books having a theme around crossword puzzles. Each book has a play along feature. As well as solving who the murderer is. Each book has one of more crossword puzzles to solve. In some chapters you would see the crossword puzzle where the answer is revealed a couple of chapters later. These puzzles have been created from the likes of Trip Payne and Will Shortz. It's worth noting given this is a US published book, all the crossword puzzles are published using the US style grid. Not all the books features crosswords. Later books looks at Acrostics, Sudoku and KenKen. if you're not good at these puzzles then there is no need to worry as they're a small distraction from reading the novel and the answer is revealed shortly later on in the books.
The main reason down to The Puzzle Lady' success is down similarly to the Stanley Hastings series. Although there is a serious theme with murders and killers. There is a lot of humour, mostly down to Cora's character as well as her banter between Sherry, Aaron and the other characters/suspects. It is recommended to read the first book (A Clue for the Puzzle Lady) onwards as it slowly introduces the sub characters. As Christmas is coming I also do recommend the fourth book, A Puzzle in a Pear Tree.
The first eight books can be bought in paperback form from Amazon and The Book Depository. While from the ninth book onwards can be bought for the Amazon Kindle. There are fourteen books in the series with the fifteenth, NYPD Puzzles being published in early 2014. You can see the list of books here.
And a Puzzle to Die On (Puzzle Lady #6) by Parnell Hall.
A change to previous books. Cora is asked by Becky Baldwin to prove a murderer, Darryl Daigue that he didn't commit his crime twenty years. Although she didn't seem interested, Becky advises there was no evidence. This intrigues Cora to see whether Daigue was framed and therefore innoncent. Turns out the murderer becomes not so co-operative to Cora, thinking he was guilty after all. Further into her investigation, Cora discovers the parole panel isn't all that "neutral" and it looked like the murderer was actually framed and was meant not to get parole. Cora's digging around ends up in trouble with the prison and the local police. As well as being followed by some one. Whilst Cora proves the guilty was innocent, Harvey sets up a surprise birthday party for Cora. He does this by asking fellow crossword constructors sending her birthday cards in the form of crossword puzzles. With Cora being unamused given her lack of solving them. It's when at the surprise birthday party at the local library a body falls from above and lands dead on Cora's birthday cake. Determined to find out who the killer is, she goes digging around with constant warnings from Harper as she breaks unlawfully into offices and the victims home.Where I have enjoyed the the first five books. I felt this started to lose momentum. Possibly because the book focuses heavily on proving the innocence and the first proper murder didn't occur half way into the book. It is an interesting twist having a closed case but maybe it could've worked with the cold case as the main theme instead of that and a fresh murder. I also felt the ending was confusing as it hard to track who did what. That said, the humour is still good as ever with Cora now more sober than ever but still craving for a cigarette.
I gave And a Puzzle to Due On 3 out of 5 stars on Goodreads.
Next to review: Gone Girl
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