Parnell Hall Stalking the Puzzle Lady

Stalking the Puzzle Lady

Parnell Hall

Bantam, Nov 2005, $24.00, 320 pp

ISBN 0553804170

Sherry Carter is pleased that her outgoing Aunt Cora "the Puzzle Lady" Felton takes the credit for constructing the crossword puzzles, because she is so shy, while her aunt is the poster girl of extroverts. Cora wants to resign because she doesn't want to go on tour as the spokesperson for the new and improved Granville Grains Corn Toasties. The only reason she agrees to do it is because she needs the money, having lost heavily due to poor investments.

Cora doesn't know that someone is in the shadows, watching every move she makes while sending her crossword puzzles. When the sender gets impatient that Cora fails to make contact with him, he kills a young actress who is posing as one of the older children that is in the crowds at each stop. Cora is uneasy because her high school friend Freddy Fosterfield is turning up everywhere she goes; while Sherry who is on tour with her aunt is being hassled by her abusive ex-husband Dennis. When the publicity person on the tour is murdered, suspicion falls on Dennism but Sherry believes he is innocent of the two killingsm and tries to prove it. This angers her lover Aaronm and irritates Coram but neither as much as an irate killer.

The latest Puzzle Lady mystery is an exciting amateur sleuth tale, in which Cora unwittingly is trapped in a cat and mouse game with a murderer who starts out as an infatuated person, and evolves into a cold-blooded killing machine. Parnell Hall focuses on the violence of stalkers who are obsessed by a celebrity, and shows why it is a hard crime to solve. This entertaining crime caper also has the usual numerous humorous moments and puzzles to solve that lead to clues.