A Puzzle in a Pear Tree (The Puzzle Lady Mysteries)

I enjoyed this book. Admittedly I picked it up without reading the others first but I intend to catch up on the series as soon as possible. This is a great read with interesting puzzles thrown in for fun that lets the reader be a part of the book by figuring out clues. Wonderful!

It's Christmas time in the town of Bakershaven, and the village is going all out. Cora Felton has been trapped into participating in the "Twelve Days of Christmas" pageant as the lead maid a milking. That means she gets to spend more time they she cares to at rehearsals being berated by director Rupert Winston. Things get interesting when a puzzle turns up in the pear tree prop. The enclosed acrostic threatens the leading lady, who happens to be Becky Baldwin. Cora's niece Sherry certainly would like to hurt Becky, but neither one of them did it. A second note only ups the stakes. Another town tradition is the living nativity. Usually populated by high schoolers, this year Becky and Sherry are helping out, playing the Virgin Mary. When Sherry arrives for her shift, she finds the Mary she is replacing dead. Was this the target of the notes or is something else going to happen? I fairly flew through this book, which is a shame because I absolutely loved it. The plot was wonderful with plenty of confusion until the end. The end was a tad more confusing then it needed to be, but it worked. Cora has given up most of her drinking and smoking, a development I found to be a welcome relief. And the humorous banter between characters was hilarious. I thought it was the funniest entry in the series since the first. This book is perfect at Christmas or any time of the year.

As Christmas nears in small-town Bakerhaven, Connecticut, both Cora Felton--the public face of the syndicated Puzzle Lady column, though not the brains behind the operation--and her cruciverbalist niece Sherry Carter are roped into participating in Yuletide festivities. Cora finds herself miscast as one of eight maids-a-milking in a production of The Twelve Days of Christmas, and Sherry is one of a number of young women playing the Virgin Mary in a live Nativity. When a series of acrostics (not crossword puzzles in this fourth installment of the series) is found with clues threatening the "leading lady"--apparently Becky Baldwin, star of the play and Sherry's rival for the affections of newspaper reporter Aaron Grant--and when one of the Virgins Mary turns up dead, Cora is more than eager for another round of amateur sleuthing. Also joining Bakerhaven's small and ineffectual police force in trying to solve the town's most recent rash of murders is Englishman Jonathan Doddsworth, a detective with Scotland Yard who happens to be in Bakerhaven visiting his estranged family. Meanwhile, regular cast member Harvey Beerbaum, Bakerhaven's other cruciverbalist, appears to be as suspicious as ever of Cora's alleged puzzle-solving abilities. In the future, however, he is apt to be more trusting: this time around Cora is finally forced into solving a puzzle in the presence of onlookers, an occasion in the Puzzle Lady's universe similar in import to Clark Kent having to change clothes in a crowded locker room. The mystery in Hall's A Puzzle in a Pear Tree will keep readers happily guessing to the end, though they may be disappointed finally in a solution that is difficult to credit. But the most surprising thing about the book is the dramatic change in the character of Cora Felton. Portrayed in the first three books of the series as a chain-smoking lush, Cora doesn't pick up a cigarette or a bottle for the first 200 pages of this installment, and we never see her drunk. It is odd that this change in Cora's habits--if it is indeed to be a lasting alteration in her character--has occurred without comment, but it is nevertheless welcome: Cora's more usual celebration of her self-destructive habits and the author's treatment of them as charming, even comical, have been serious impediments to my enjoyment of the series. In A Puzzle in a Pear Tree we get the clever crime solver without, for the most part, the unfortunate habits that would render her noisome and obnoxious--and too close to an early death--in real life. Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

Once again the puzzle lady, Cora Felton, is entrapped in a puzzle mystery (one she has no idea how to solve.) This time it's Crosstics...enclosed in red envelopes. People are dying,notably those who participate in the living nativity scene. Coracalls on her niece Sherry to solve the puzzles, but it is her wit and knowledge that eventually solve the mystery. The 12 Days of Christmas show is hilarious.

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