NYPD Puzzle: A Puzzle Lady Mystery

NYPD Puzzle is the fifteenth novel featuring the Puzzle Lady and sees her dividing her time between her adoptive small town and New York where she grew up. I quite like this as it starts, but the mystery side has a problem as it develops. When you come to the end and see what was happening and why, it all makes perfect sense. To that extent, it’s satisfying. But as you read it, there’s a growing sense of frustration that no one can really understand what’s going on and why. Indeed, the only way our heroine gets the solution is when the killer(s) explain(s) it all. Yes, until that moment, she has absolutely no clue.

Why is that a problem? Because I prefer my amateur detectives to solve the cases they are working on. It’s humiliating and rather defeats the point of the exercise when she has to sit quietly and have it explained to her. So this is nowhere near as good as the last in the series and, although it contains the usual crosswords and sudoku puzzles to distract you while reading the text, I’m not so sure this book is worth the time.