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The Puzzle Lady Vs. The Sudoku Lady (2009)

by Parnell Hall(Favorite Author)

3.32 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0312612184 (ISBN13: 9780312612184)

languge

English

genre

Mystery & Thriller

publisher

Minotaur Books

series

Puzzle Lady

review 1: With all the vast number of books that exist in the world, it is always a puzzle to find one to read despite the fact that my taste in reading are so catholic that I can almost walk up to any bookcase and pick any book and enjoy it. That is almost what happened here -- I was at the library looking to see if there were any Charlaine Harris books on the shelves that I have not yet read, and as a word on the title spine of a book on the next higher shelf deep out of me. The word, of course, was sudoku, which was enough to force me to pull the book off the shelf to look at its front cover and its back cover. The front cover should be the profile view of two ladies, 182 delicate and perhaps too young oriental women in the other a blonde/white-haired Caucasian woman whose featur... morees were distorted in an unflattering grimace, with the latter apparently giving the former a tongue lashing of the former maintain an inscrutable sweetness. In addition to providing the title, the front cover informed me that this was "a puzzle Lady mystery" and also that the book included puzzles by Will Shortz. That alone would have been enough to convince me to take the book, but the back cover included extremely complementary comments from reviewers of other books in the Puzzle Lady series. So it was a mystery novel within oriental lady and what the critics promised to be fascinating characters, and it included puzzles by Will Shortz (who, if you do not know, creates extraordinarily difficult sudoku puzzles). I had to take it.It was worth the slight risk. The characters are indeed fascinating, and the conversation between his daylight. The main characters are Cora Felton, the Puzzle Lady, who also creates sudoku and whose latest sudoku book has just become a bestseller in Japan; Minami, who in Japan is known as the Sudoku Lady and who is somewhat upset that Cora's book has just edged her own book off the bestseller list in Japan; Sherry, Cora's niece, with whom Cora lives but who has just gotten married to her newspaper reporter live-in lover, so that the small house beginning to field a bit crowded; Michiko, Minami’s teenaged niece, who is traveling with her art as a translator. Along with these main characters, Hall provides a contingent of minor characters who interact with these during the course of the book. There are two interesting subplots that run through the story: one is Cora, who has a great reputation for creating really difficult crossword puzzles, in fact cannot do crossword puzzles at all; she is great at sudoku but the puzzles that she publishes are created by her niece, Sherry -- conversely, Minami has a big reputation in Japan for creating devilish sudoku puzzles, but she is in fact completely on cable to solve them, and the puzzles that she publishes are in fact created by her niece, Michiko. The other aspect is that both of them have reputations for helping to solve crimes, and the ploy of the novel is that Minimi has come to the United States to see if she can best Cora and thereby win a reputation that will put her sudoku books back on the bestseller list. All they need, of course, is a complicated crime to work on, then one just happens to come along at the time that Minami and Michiko arrive. As if that were not enough, the crime rapidly expands into multiple murders, compounded by the fact that Sherry's ex-husband, who is still trying to get Sherry back gets involved with Michiko. The crime action is complex enough to satisfy most mystery fans, and the book has the added extras of crossword puzzles and sudoku puzzles containing clues to lead the two sleuths to a final conclusion (and which also can be solved by the reader for his/her entertainment, but the real joy of the book is the hilarious dialogue between the characters throughout. This is not great writing by any stretch, but it is witty and entertaining and a fun read -- sufficiently so that I will be looking for other books in the series in the future.The one problem I had with this novel is its continual insistence that Cora can solve sudoku's because of her mathematical skills, whereas Minimi cannot solve them because she does not have any math skills. There is no math involved in sudokus, as my writing instructor so nastily pointed out when I tried to suggest that my protagonist thought there was as A bit of irony in one of my own stories. Since I could not get away with it for a moment of sarcasm, it is bothersome to see a published writer continually repeating the claim seriously.
review 2: Originally liked this series a lot. Funny, irreverent, down-to-earth...Can that wear thin? Am I getting old? Cora seems to be getting annoying, rather than the independent, free-spirit I thought she was. I used to enjoy how "real" Cora was. Now, she seems to be so self-centered, deceitful and conniving. What happened?This is a lighter mystery. Lighter mysteries have their place; I often enjoy them. I'm not sure why this was just a tad unsatisfactory - maybe I've moved on in a sense. Too much levity; too much lying; too much sarcasm (can I actually be saying that?). The earlier books are fun. But maybe contrived in a way. A Puzzle Lady that can't solve a puzzle (we're talking crossword puzzles. Her niece constructs crossword puzzles and is a whiz at solving them. Cora is just basically a "front" person; her age basically lending respectability. I loved it when Cora proves to be a whiz at Sudoku. I do poorly at crosswords, myself. I am by no means a whiz at Sudoku, but I know I do so much better at those puzzles and enjoy them more, that I felt a kind of kinship with Cora. But now, I wonder. Maybe this series is getting to be too munch of a good thing. less

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