Manyebook

Stalking the Puzzle Lady

Cora Felton may look like everyone’s favorite grandmother. But the white-haired, bespectacled Puzzle Lady swears, smokes, gambles, and is even dodgy on the subject of how many husbands she’s had. So it strikes her long-suffering niece Sherry Carter as amusing when Cora announces, “I’m tired of living a lie!”

The inspiration for this sudden burst of honesty is a promotion by Granville Grains featuring the Puzzle Lady on a bus tour of televised personal appearances. Cora can’t think of anything she’d like to do less — except maybe quit smoking — than travel the supermarkets of I-95 hawking the new and improved Corn Toasties to her legions of fans. And someone else mustn’t want her to go either, because they’ve left a knife planted in her front door with a crossword puzzle attached. But when Sherry solves the puzzle she can’t decide whether the enigmatic message is a threat, a love note, or — creepier still — both.

Like it or not, Cora and Sherry must take their show on the road, along with a makeshift TV crew that includes a smarmy producer with a bad hairpiece, an abrasive director, an overambitious publicist, and two overgrown child-actors with some very adult problems. Throw in a few uninvited guests, including a roly-poly munchkin who’s had an unrequited crush on Cora since high school and Sherry’s abusive ex-husband, and you don’t need to be a puzzle expert to know this trip is going to be murder!

  • Format
  • paperback
  • Pages
  • 384
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9780553587630
  • Characters
  • Cora Felton
  • Genres
  • mystery, fiction
  • Release date
  • 2006