"Excellent amateur sleuth"

Everyone in the town of Bakerhaven is caught up in the holiday season from the people taking part in the Christmas pageant to the folks posing in the live nativity. One of the highlights of the poignant is the humorous take on The Twelve Days of Christmas directed by Broadway producer, Rupert Winston. Cora Felton, known to the whole town as the puzzle lady, is one of the maids a milking if she survives the rehearsals without throttling the odious director.

Cora's niece Sherry is one of the women starring as the Virgin Mary. She receives quite a jolt when the actress playing the role before her is murdered. The girl that was killed was a high school teen who had every privilege and was one of the most popular students in her school. The father of Dorrie's best friend is visiting while on vacation from Scotland Yard and takes an active role in the investigation. All the circumstantial evidence leads him to Sherry as the perpetrator. Cora is not about to let her niece be tried for murder so she goes into sleuth mode to ferret out the murder.

Parnell Hall has written another excellent amateur sleuth novel starring his recurring character the Puzzle Lady. Cora is a natural comedienne who lightens the plot up when the action becomes very intense. This is a very convoluted mystery with so many twists and turns, dead ends, and viable suspects that readers will want to finish the book in one sitting so they can puzzle out who did what to whom.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted November 3, 2002

Summary

The Chicago Sun-Times crowns Parnell Hall's Puzzle Lady mysteries "a joy for lovers of both crosswords and frothy crime detection...Cora Felton is a lovable and unique sleuth." Now the crime-solving powers of the inimitable Cora and her clever niece, Sherry Carter, are put to the ultimate test as they square off against a yuletide killer who hides within the white-and-black shadows of an acrostic.... A Puzzle In A Pear Tree 'Tis the season to be jolly, but Cora Felton, shanghaied into "The Twelve Days of Christmas" as a most reluctant maid-a-milking, has every right to feel like a grinch. When someone steals the partridge from the pear tree and replaces it with a cryptic puzzle she has no hope of solving, it's almost more than the Puzzle Lady can bear. But then smug crossword creator Harvey Beerbaum solves the acrostic, and it turns out to be a poem promising the death of an actress. This is more like it! Could the threat be aimed at Cora and her thespian debut? Or at Sherry, one of the ladies-dancing? Or at Sherry's nemesis, the pageant's predatory lead, Becky Baldwin? Cora and Sherry barely have time for a mystery, what with trimming Christmas trees and buying Christmas presents, but rehearsals go on, under police protection--until a killer strikes elsewhere in a most unexpected manner.Ordinarily Cora Felton would be delighted to have two murders to solve. But this time she finds herself vying with a visiting Scotland Yard inspector who appears to have an all- too-personal stake in solving the crimes. Cora does too when her own niece becomes a prime suspect and the murderer strikes again. Is someone trying to shut down the Christmas pageant? Cora would be only too happy if that were the case, but she fears the secrets lie deeper. Now she is interviewing witnesses, breaking into motel rooms, finding evidence, planting evidence, and having a merry old time. In fact, she would be perfectly happy--if this wasn't turning out to be a Christmas to die for!