A Puzzle in a Pear Tree (Puzzle Lady, #4) by Parnell Hall

A Puzzle in a Pear Tree (Puzzle Lady, #4) Reviews

• 
  Andrea

  I really enjoyed the complexity of the mystery in this one, which included red herrings and way too many folks involved, but what would have been four stars for me dropped down to three for two reasons. 1 - the final solution felt rushed and sort of nonsensicle and 2 - my Kindle edition had spots every 15 pages or so wherein multiple words were missing from sentences. Most of the time these omissions were pretty easy to figure out but I can't help but wonder if I missed anything important...That could be the biggest mystery of all.
• 
  Kate

  "The crime-solving powers of the inimitable Puzzle Lady and he clever niece, Sherry, are put to the ultimate4 test as they square off against a yuletide killer who hides within he white-and-black shadows of an acrostic ...
  
  "'Tis the season to be jolly, but Cora Felton, shanghaied into 'The Twelve Days of Christas' as a most reluctant maid-a-milking, has reason to feel like a grinch. The partridge from the pear tree has been replaced with a cryptic puzzle -- one that promises the death of an actress. 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 pagenat's predatory lead? But the show must go on -- until a killer strikes in a most unexpected manner. And when Sherry becomes a prime suspect and the murderer strikes again, it's up to the detecting duo to read between the lines -- before this becomes a Christmas to die for."
  ~~back cover
  
  Convoluted as always, our Cora blunders and bullies her way to solving the murders, thus freeing Sherry from a murder charge. Wonderful dizzy maneuvering along the way for LOL for the reader. What could be better?
• 
  Abigail

  4 stars.
  
  I thought the plot and solution were really satisfying. I was able to figure out 80% of the ending before it was revealed, which was a really nice change from figuring out 0% of the ending in book #2 and being so disappointed in that book's solution (note: Book #3 wasn't available from the library right now, so I jumped ahead to this one).
  
  It's not nearly as funny as the first installment in the series, but it partially makes up for it with all the descriptions of the humorous staging of the Twelve Days of Christmas.
  
  I do think it should lose points just because acrostic puzzles are so annoying to do -- I completed the first one on my own, but I think it took me longer to do it than read the entire book, so I didn't even bother with the other acrostics and just let the book reveal the answers. Although I did appreciate how inventively Cora and Sherry deal with navigating the puzzle solving in this one.
• 
  Katharine

  If you are a reader of mysteries who likes to try to follow the clues and solve the mystery, DO NOT BOTHER reading A Puzzle In a Pear Tree. There are fake clues, invisible clues (that you don't find out exist until after everything is over), planted clues, and real clues. There are items discussed as though the reader must have known about them. Example: one character states "So, you're the one who sent the letter?" when I swear to God there was no mention of any letter on any previous page of the book. Then, to top it all off, the protagonist explains the whole motivation and crime in the last chapter - that includes all sorts of information never discussed, hinted at or demonstrated at any point during the story. In other words, the reader has no prayer and just has to accept the result. I found this infuriating. I felt completely swindled. The series overall is very good. This book is not.
• 
  Marsha Valance

  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? Or at Sherry, one of the ladies-dancing? Or at Sherry's nemesis, the pageant's predatory lead, Becky Baldwin?
  
• 
  Linda Griffin

  Just ok. I liked the idea of including real puzzles to solve. I found much of the dialogue to be annoying with excessive use of 'wanna'. The resolution of the mystery was totally outrageous and even so, left unanswered questions. I was looking forward to reading the rest of the series but have decided to stop at this one.
• 
  Deb White

  Cora Felton and her niece, Sherry, are both in the Christmas play. Sherry is in the live manger scene also. When a high school teen, posing as Mary dies, Cora gets involved. Lots of puzzles, acrostic, this time. Are they also trying to kill the leading lady of the play?
  Who did it? The British police inspector? A teenage boy? Someone involved with the play?
• 
  Chrystine

  I really enjoyed this Puzzle Lady book. I was pleased to see that Cora was not falling down drunk all over the place. She was for the most part trying to fly below the radar. It was nice to see this in her character. I also thought , or was overly hopeful, that there was a slight truce with Becky. I did enjoy the additional sleuth solver in the mix.
• 
  AngryBunny13

  I keep reading this series because I enjoy the relationships and banter between a lot of the main characters but aside from that (and the puzzles obvi) this mystery and conclusion was just irritating.
  
  I will say that the Twelve Days of Christmas concert concept, if actually done live albeit repetitive would be hilarious based on the cast descriptions
• 
  Laurie

  I was excited about this because I like word puzzles and themed mystery series, but in the end the characters were all caricatures, the plot was convoluted and full of red herrings, and it never came together for me.
• 
  Devin

  I don't typically review these books. I just binge them. BUT.
  The ending? My gosh. It was so much crammed in a murder.
  Parnell Hall truly fails to dissapoint. (And I'm 27).
• 
  Andrea Johnston

  I just love a strong, plucky lead character with sass for miles and a sharp intellect. These books are absolutely fabulous and so much fun to read.
• 
  Red

  Everyone in this cozy mystery smokes!
  Didn’t care for any of the characters.
• 
  John E

  Not very satisfying. Be prepared to draw up a list of characters and relationships to understand this one.
• 
  Nancy G

  The plot was a little more complicated than necessary to drive the story, but it was funny book and I enjoyed reading it.
• 
  Toby

  Unread shelf project 2022: book 42.
• 
  JBradford

  This is the fourth in the Hall’s series of novels about the Puzzle Lady, Ms. Cora Felton, a many-times-married indomitable woman of uncertain middle age who lives on her alimony money while living with her niece, Sherry Carter, a substitute preschool teacher, who is the real creator of the crossword puzzles in the daily newspaper that Cora gets credit for. Since it is a small town, both Sherry and Cora have been roped into participating in the Christmas pageant at the high school where a newly hired drama coach, fresh from a successful career on Broadway, is trying to create a sensational version of "The 12 Days Of Christmas" by having the townspeople volunteers act out parts, where Cora is one of the eight maids a-milking, Sherry is one of the nine ladies dancing, Arron Grant (the young Gazette reporter whom Sherry is avidly pursuing) is one of the twelve drummers drumming, and Harvey Beerbaum (a grammarian who thinks he's in strong competition with Cora for solving crossword puzzles, completely unaware that she is hopelessly unable to do so) is one of the four lords–a-leaping. All of this would be amusing enough, except that the real star of the show, the maiden to whom all the gifts are being given, is Becky Baldwin, a beautiful young woman who went through high school with Arron and had thought she was going to renew their relationship when she returned from law school to open a practice in Bakerhaven. Robert Winston, the new drama coach, turns out to be an unpleasant perfectionist who criticizes everyone's performance but is most critical of Cora, who would dearly love to get out of the whole production but cannot get Winston to fire her because her fame as the Puzzle Lady is one of the drawing cards of the pageant. As should only be expected, things take a new turn when one of the players, an attractive high school senior is murdered while posing in the role of the Virgin Mary in a living statue version of the Christmas crèche on the town common. It turns out that the father of the murdered girl’s best friend, another high school senior, is visiting from England, where he is an inspector at Scotland Yard, and there soon arises the inevitable competition between the inspector and the Puzzle Lady to figure out who did it.
  
  This time the clues presented in the form of acrostic puzzles, which is really not my thing (and, of course, is not at all Cora's thing, either), and Cora is continually hard-pressed by Chief Harper and Harvey to solve each puzzle that turns up as successive events occur, including the near murder of Becky and the actual murder of the backstage technical director. Along the way, just to add to the interest, Sherry becomes the chief suspect and Cora hires Becky as her attorney, which leads to all sorts of subplots. As I found to be the case in the previous book that I read from this series, the plot is incredibly convoluted and over contrived, and it is clear that Hall is just having fun with his readers, but the laughable conversations between the characters is an absolute delight, making the book a fun read. I am sensitive now to the fact that Hall loves to confuse his readers with all kinds of red herrings, causing us to continually guess and then guess again is to who did the deed, but this effort was a blockbuster in that it winds up with two and a half different endings. I find myself surprised that no one in Hollywood has turned this into a film, because it reads as a visual story.
  
• 
  Ginger

  Crystal checked this out from the library for me because it has three things that I'm normally interested in: Christmas, crossword puzzles, and mysteries. This is mystery detective fiction set during Christmas in which the murderer communicates through Crossword Puzzles (which appear blank in the book for you to solve!) Well, I think we can all guess this was not going to be an award winner. I'll add that the main female detective character hosts a puzzle tv show, but actually hates crossword puzzles. That seems to be a weird choice given the puzzle loving demographic it's aimed at.
  This book started off unbearably boring, got a little better once some characters died and the plot got complicated, and then ended stupidly in a "who is the most bizarre character we can pin this on" fashion a la CSI or something. I'm only giving it two stars because I liked working the puzzles.
• 
  Liora

  I enjoy these Puzzle Lady mysteries even though they are a stretch in believability. This has the killer sending messages in the form of anacrostic puzzles, which are my favorite type of word puzzles. The setting is at Christmas time in a small town in New England where Cora, known as the Puzzle Lady, lives with her niece, Sherry, who is the real Puzzle Lady. I like the character of elderly, unconventional, witty Cora, but Sherry comes across as uptight, whiny and somewhat cold. There were lots of twists and turns in the mystery itself, and the motive for the final resolution was strange, but I enjoyed the ride and all the quirky characters.
• 
  Toni

  Story was drawn out and a bit stretched. Story had four actual acrostic word puzzles to solve (the answers were provided in case you don't want to solve them) and those were fun (quite easy). Author had an annoying preference for foreign vehicles. And the author is confused about the Immaculate Conception. He believes, as many do, that it refers to the conception of Jesus Christ but it is really about the conception of Mary. She was born without original sin which is why her conception was Immaculate. And why she is known by the name, The Immaculate Conception. Easy to look up, his research is off. Overall, a fun, easy read.