Customer Reviews

You Have the Right to Remain Puzzled (Puzzle Lady Mysteries)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I enjoyed reading this book. I am a big fan of the Puzzle Lady Mysteries. I have read them all, and often look forward to a new book each year. This was a fast read and some of the statements that Cora the Puzzle Lady says in the book are comical.

I have found over the past years that the earlier Puzzle Lady Mysteries were better than the recent ones. This story made the Puzzle Lady seem very mean and feisty. In the past the character was feisty in a comical way. The Puzzle lady used to drink alcohol a little too much, but she was a sweet, happy drunk. The author now has our heroine on the wagon and she seems very bitter without her booze. While reading this book I often wished she would start to drink or get another love interest so she would lighten up. I thought the Puzzle Lady seemed a little too mean for her own good in this story. The last couple of chapters left me confused regarding how the murder occurred. I felt like the author had to quickly write the ending.

Cora Felton is bored. Nothing exciting has happened in her life for months. She even asks Chief Harper for any cases she can help solve. He gives her a case of stolen chairs. They've been missing for a year now, and the police have no leads.

But things get even hairier when Cora asks her niece Sherry to create an apology puzzle for a housewife. Next thing Cora knows, she's being accused of plagiarizing the puzzle. Benny Southstreet, the original creator, has a case. This could spell the end of the Puzzle Lady columns. Then Benny is murdered and all the evidence begins to point to Cora. Can she clear herself of the frame?

The book doesn't spend much time explaining who the characters are, so don't jump in here. But since this is the eighth book in the series, some previous knowledge of the characters is fine in my book.

There are so many plot threads in this book that I had a hard time seeing how Parnell Hall would tie it all together. But in the end, he did. And, while Cora kept most of the important clues to herself until the end, we did get to see a few of them as the story unfolded. And those chair become the subject of a comedy of errors that become very funny.

Unfortunately, the characters weren't quite as lovable, at least in the beginning. The normal banter seemed more edged with anger. And I didn't care for Sherry and Aaron's sub-plot. (Speaking of which, can Dennis be a murder victim soon? Please?) Once things got going, it was much better and there were even some laughs along the way.

This is one of the most puzzling cases in the series yet. Fans will be glad to see that the Puzzle Lady has lost none of her ability to mystify.

It has been a struggle to finish this book. I could care less about missing chairs and new boyfriends vs. ex-husbands. This mystery is a stretch and I would not recommend this one in her series. Also, the young wife who needed a puzzle for her weird husband in order to apologize for a dented car, adds nothing to the plot, although it was obviously needed.
Don't buy this one, get one of her others.

One day at the coffee shop, puzzle lady Cora Feldon is asked to construct a puzzle for Mimi Dillinger so that's she can give it to her husband Chuck when she tells him she crashed the car. She hopes he will forgive her, which he does. Mimi publicly thanks Cora for the role her puzzle played and the note and puzzle appearin the newspaper. However there is one minor problem. Cora did not create the puzzle; her niece Sherry Carter did and she purloined it from a book of puzzles though she changed the clues.

The actual puzzle creator Benny Southstreet is livid that Cora plagiarized his work and when he challenged her she blew him off because she refuses to believe that Sherry would do such a deed. Benny plans to sue Cora so he breaks into her home and that of the Dillingers seeking proof. Earlier that day Mimi notices fifteen hundred dollars lying loose at her husband's desk so she puts the cash away. Chick calls the police to report a break-in, which leads to a series of events resulting in someone murdering Benny and Cora arrested for the homicide as all evidence leads to her.

The latest puzzle lady mystery is a delightful whodunit complete with crossword puzzles that entertain and stimulate the readers with clues to the mystery. Cora is the star as she seeks to clear her name even while every clue she finds proves her guilt. There are many red herrings that the audience will not know across from down as Cora looks guilty. Parnell Hall provides his fans with a solid murder mystery that only by finishing the book can a reader uncover the identity of the culprit.

Harriet Klausner

I am going to focus more on the Puzzle Lady series, as opposed to this specific book, and that's fine because the elements and strengths and/or weaknesses remain pretty consistent throughout the series.

The Good. Pacing -- Hall is (or was) the BEST cozy writer out there when it comes to pacing. His books race along at breakneck speed, with new angles or clues uncovered almost continuously. I can't think of another cozy writer who even comes close.

Characters - They're not great, but I like `em just fine. For a while there Cora's bad habits became a tad distasteful (boozing a lot is all fine and good, passing out drunk and slobbering in a cheap bar is not), but Hall's reined that in. The characters are good enough to bring me back again, and that's all I can ask.

The Bad. The bad has always been there, even in the first book in the series, which was just a fabulous read. It's just that the bad is becoming more and more pronounced and what was good has been slowly disappearing. I'll start with the small things and work my way up to a foaming-at-the-mouth, unbridled frenzy of criticism.

Atmosphere - Nothing is more important to me in a cozy than atmosphere. Unfortunately, Hall, like many other cozy writers (see my review of The Teaberry Strangler), thinks that saying "It was Fall in Vermont" once or twice is enough to set the atmosphere. WRONG!!! He may say that it was Fall in Vermont, but reading the book you come away thinking it might as well have been February in Flint, Michigan, in 1979. There is almost NO atmosphere in his books. Surprisingly, considering how important atmosphere is to me, his first book was so good it completely overcame the lack of atmosphere and was still a great read.

Razor Sharp and Witty Repartee - all fine and good, but it should be limited to one or two characters at most. EVERY character in these books engages in razor sharp and witty repartee with EVERY other character in EVERY conversation. It gets real old, real fast.

The Aaron-Sherry-Dennis-Brenda-Becky romantic "tension" - Holy, sweet, mother of all that is good and holy!!!!! Truly, my vocabulary fails me when I attempt to tell you how old and awful and tired this routine is. This "tension" did not work on the 1st go round. Now in its 2,765th installment, it's gotten REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY old. The mere existence of Dennis killed any shot it had at working the first time around. Which leads me to...

Dennis Pride - "I'm cool, I'm cocky, I'm bad, I'm arrogant, I'm handsome, and I can get away with anything at anytime, and break any law or restraining order just because I am so bad, and so cool, and so cocky, and so arrogant, and so groovy." This is a good character for ONE book - the revolting little maggot who is killed off quickly to the applause of all the reading and literate world. But in EVERY book, in almost EVERY chapter, causing trouble for no good reason whatsoever, moving the "plot" forward in no discernible way?

Plot -- remember how I said Hall writes page turners where something new and exciting is revealed on every page? Well, in the first book he did that through genius and hard work. Now he does it by simply inventing the most unimaginable, complex, ridiculous, outlandish, unrealistic, nonsensical plot twists imaginable. He will have 10,000 wholly separate and unrelated balls/plot threads in the air at once, and then, in the final pages, he will tie everything together. Trust me when I say you will need three of the Pentagon's fastest computers, and Stephen Hawking sitting next to you to keep up with the nonsensical and ridiculous garbage that is thrown at you in this "solution". These horrors of plotting were on full display in "You Have the Right to Remain Puzzled", the most aptly named book in the history of literature.

See if you can follow this... Dennis Pride walks into Cora's lawyer's at the very second that Benny reveals that he's after the Puzzle Lady for plagiarism, the lawyer is also Cora's lawyer????, Benny breaks into a guy's office to investigate the plagiarism, as Dennis plans to approach Benny to get dirt on Cora, as Cora herself snoops in the same office as Benny has broken into, Cora finds a "clue" that leads her to call the cops in a most excited manner, EVEN AS DENNIS IS HIDING IN HER CLOSET AND OVERHEARS THE CONVERSATION, leading Dennis to approach the man for whom Cora allegedly plagiarized a crossword puzzle, all this is going on as Benny approaches a man about some chairs that Cora is bidding on on ebay, he knows she is bidding on the chairs because he broke into her office, too, and got on her computer. The chairs (a seemingly unrelated plot thread) were stolen from the very man whom Benny is now approaching. So, as a result of unlikely occurrences and unlikely snooping, Dennis approaches both the man who was victimized by plagiarism and the man for whom the plagiarism was committed, even as the victim of said plagiarism approaches the guy for whom Cora is working on some stolen chairs case.

I could go on. Actually, I could not go on, because I'd blow up like a Fembot in an Austin Powers movie.
These books are simply unbearable at this point. The repartee, the romantic tension, Dennis Pride, and the plot gimmicks are beyond horrible.

The first book of many that I plan on reading. I couldn't help but like the puzzle lady, warts and all! Very good story line, too, I almost solved it. And if you like doing puzzles, you get an added bonus.