$10,000 in Small, Unmarked Puzzles

November 14, 2011
In Hall’s well-plotted if padded 13th mystery featuring PI and puzzle lady Cora Felton (after 2011’s The KenKen Killings), lawyer Becky Baldwin persuades Cora to deliver a blackmail payment, in the amount stated in the book’s title, on behalf of an unnamed client. When Cora opens the lid of the Dumpster at the abandoned gas station where she’s to make the drop, she finds a man inside, shot in the temple. A piece of paper protruding from the dead man’s pocket turns out to be, no surprise for this puzzle-themed cozy series, a sudoku. In the subsequent murder investigation, Cora and friends rehash events at length and bicker to the point where the reader has to wonder if they really care about solving the crime. At one point Brookhaven, Conn., police chief Dale Harper asks Cora to answer “in simple, declarative sentences.” Cora’s evasive, bantering replies may exasperate those who aren’t already Hall fans.

Starred review from December 1, 2011
One of the Puzzle Lady's former husbands comes back to haunt her yet again. While Cora Felton waits for her niece Sherry, who actually constructs the crossword puzzles attributed to Cora, to give birth, she's reluctant to take on a job offered her by the stunning young attorney Becky Baldwin. But when she does agree to deliver a blackmail payment, she finds herself in the soup. Inside the dumpster at a deserted service station she finds a dead body and a sudoku, just the type of puzzle she happens to excel at solving. She hides the money in an old gas pump just before the arrival of Police Chief Harper, with whom Cora's meddling in earlier cases (The KenKen Killings, 2011, etc.) has led to quite the love/hate relationship. Anxious to get to the hospital where Sherry's about to deliver her premature baby, Cora must call her lawyer to get away from the police. Becky refuses to reveal her client, but it appears to be Cora's least-liked ex-husband Melvin, who claims that he's being framed by an enemy with a grudge. Since the first $10,000 in blackmail money has disappeared, Cora agrees to make another drop, this time at a cemetery where she discovers a second corpse. It puts no damper on Cora's curiosity when the police arrest Melvin. Instead, she continues to look for the killer, putting herself and family in danger. One of the Puzzle Lady's finest hours, faster paced than most, with the obligatory puzzles to help solve the case.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 15, 2011
Cora Felton, the Puzzle Lady, is in a tizzy as she drives her niece, Sherry, and her husband to the Bakerhaven, Connecticut, hospital to have their first baby. There is good reason for the tizzy. Sherry, as fans of this series' know, is the real genius behind Cora's crossword puzzles, and if Sherry can't write them, will Cora be outed as a fraud? Complicating matters further, the town's lawyer, Becky Baldwin, seeks Cora's assistance with a blackmail case. Following the first clue, which comes in the form of a Sudoku (Cora knows her Sudoku better than she does her crosswords), the Puzzle Lady sets off to do the drop of $10,000 in blackmail money. Simple task, it would seem, until Cora finds a body in the Dumpster. What follows is a farcical romp involving after-hours hospital visits to get Sherry's assistance with crossword-puzzle clues, snatching the Sudoku and crossword clues before the police find them, and dealing with the arrival of an ex-husband, judicial threats, and nighttime wanderings through a cemetery. Great fun for series fans, who will be pleased to know that mother and daughter are doing well.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)