Stalking the Puzzle Lady (Puzzle Lady Mysteries)
by Parnell Hall
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Book Summary Information
Author: Parnell HallEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-08-29
ISBN: 0553587633
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Bantam
Book Reviews of Stalking the Puzzle Lady (Puzzle Lady Mysteries)
Book Review: "It is a puzzlement," remarked His Majesty, the Yul of Siam
Summary: 5 Stars
All things considered, one would not anticipate much of a demand for a series of mysteries in which the creator(s) of crossword puzzles endlessly stumble over puzzle-obsessed murderers. Nevertheless, there is not only one such a series in print, but two! And maybe, for all I know, a half-dozen more are lurking out there in the bush, as well. "Stalking the Puzzle Lady" is member of much the better of the two series.
Author Parnell Hall first came to my attention with a 1987 novel called "Detective," the first of a series featuring Stanley Hastings, a fairly ordinary Joe, fairly happily married, who is an underemployed, underpaid, unaspiring private detective struggling to write his first, long-delayed mystery novel. Much of the charm of the Hastings series was the author's obvious glee in placing his distinctly un-hard-boiled private eye into good, old, traditional hard-boiled plots, then leaving the harassed and often frightened Hastings to wriggle out as best he might.
From 1988 to 1992, Hall also published five books featuring somebody named Steve Winslow.
I remember good reviews for the Hastings books, but for the life of me I can't recall a thing about the Winslow series--or even if I ever found one to read. PI Stanley Hastings always struck me as all right guy but he was never really good hero-material, not the solid core for a lengthy series that could hope to extract much money from MY pockets. I am not privy to Hall's sales figures, of course, but it was my impression that the Hastings books were more likely to attract praise from connoisseurs than burst onto anybody's bestseller list.
That is why I suspect that about 1998, Hall or his agent or his publisher took a long, hard look at the mystery-buying public. And, I think, from that long, hard look, the Puzzle Lady series was born, for it is aimed not merely at one but at two distinct segments of the female demographic. Instead of the conventional cozy mystery team of heroine and sidekick, the Puzzle Lady series has what amounts to two heroines. One of them is a cozy mystery staple, a young woman beginning to achieve success and financial reward in an unusual profession. She has found a moderately attractive young man and their courtship can be (and has been) stretched from book to book to book, providing some handy continuity for the series. The other heroine is an elder relative with whom she shares a home, a woman who appears to be everyone's favorite grandmother, but whose character seems to be made of equal portions of Miss Marple, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Tugboat Annie and Ma Barker.
The gimmick of the series is that the younger woman, Sherry, is a successful creator of crossword puzzles who does not look the part, while the older, Cora despises the things, but looks exactly like the sort of person to create brain-twisters. In the tried-and-true tradition of "I've got the brains, you've got the looks, let's make money," the two exchange roles to make Cora the public face of the puzzles.
Preposterous? Yes. Does it work? You betcha! Okay, go figure, a puzzle-packing murderer (or something like it) turns up conveniently for each book. But so what? Cora is a genuine, dyspeptic hoot and Sherry can be fun, too.
The plots of these books, in common with many or even most cozy mysteries, are the least significant things about them. Suffice it to say that they are workmanlike and effective. The strength of such books is the entertaining way in which their heroines deal with the melodrama--the tsuris, if you will--tossed at them by the author. Cora and Sherry deal with it admirably.
The series has an additional asset that lifts it over the throng of competing cozies. Unlike the competent but plodding wordsmiths of most mysteries, Parnell Hall is a genuine writer. He routinely, and without any fuss, pulls off scenes that are simply not attempted by most cozy mystery writers. In Chapter 10, for instance what could be a major plot development is treated not as a discovery or as a source of fear but in the form of chitchat that would serve as well for a pair of "42nd Street" chorines primping for a date with a couple of well-heeled swells. Or this masterly bit of summarizing from Chapter 30:
"Okay," the cop named Jerry said. "Let me see if I've got this straight. The one guy was married to two of the girls, but not the blond girl. The other guy is dating two of the girls, including Blondie, and barely knows the other one. The girl who was married to the one guy and is dating the other is your niece. The girl who is married to the other guy is your niece's best friend. The guy who is dating your niece and used to go with the blond bombshell is a reporter. And the girl who looks like she just stepped out of a Victoria's Secret catalogue is a lawyer. Is that right?"
"Basically, I doubt if they'd appreciate being called girls, but that's their problem."
No-one could ever accuse the books of the Puzzle Lady series of being great literature, but they are certainly entertaining and expertly written. They stand well above the cozy mystery average. By the standards of their genre, they are worth five stars.
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