Missing Pieces
Over the last few years, I’ve come to realize I just don’t enjoy jigsaw puzzles. I don’t have the patience to put them together, spending forever looking for pieces that fit each other. But I figured that would be a skill that would really help those looking to solve a mystery, so I decided to give Puzzle Me a Murder by Roz Noonan a chance. Sadly, this first in a series disappointed.
Alice Pepper and her friends love hanging out in her house solving puzzles. She’s blessed with a large house in a Portland suburb, and it’s where people usually gather. She’s also lucky to have her childhood best friend, Ruby Milliner in town.
When Ruby returns home early from a business trip, she discovers her husband, George, with his mistress. Ruby spends that night with Alice. The next morning, they learned sometime during the night, someone killed George. Naturally, the police think Ruby makes a fine suspect. Can Alice find the pieces that prove someone else is a killer?
Alice and Ruby are closer to retirement than even middle age. Honestly, I liked the idea of a series featuring older sleuths. The more variety, the better, right? And I get that people can have multiple careers. But I feel like the author went too far trying to give the characters skills. For example, Alice is the head librarian who recently left the restaurant business. There were another couple characters like that. They felt more like ticking off boxes than anything else so we could cover anything that this book or future plots might need. The potential love interest with his mysterious past actually did work for me, however. Given the length of the book, I didn’t feel we got to know the characters super well, too.
Then there was the lack of attention to detail. A character, who is a school superintendent, has parent teacher conferences. The problem? The book is set in July. They might be meeting during that time, but it didn’t feel realistic to me. The time of the sunset appears to change by a couple of hours in a couple of days.
And the book was just too long. Despite the murder happening pretty quickly, it still took quite a while for the plot to get going. We could have easily cut out 60 pages. I was okay with the way Alice kept getting info from the official investigation. It wasn’t realistic, but I give most cozies a pass on that particular plot point. While the climax was logical, it felt pretty abrupt to me. Ironic given the length of the book.
Puzzle Me a Murder has promise. But it needed a good edit before it was released. I won’t be moving on with the series.
Note: I received an ARC of this book.
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