A CROSSWORDER’S HOLIDAY
by Nero Blanc
Crossword constructor Belle Graham and her private investigator husband Rosco Polycrates (A Crossword to Die For, 2002, etc.) travel to five cozy locations to enjoy a winter holiday—in this set of short stories that, in the silly tradition of Busman’s Honeymoon, feature mysteries that intrude on the couple’s vacations. Belle and Rosco must solve crossword mysteries while spending Christmas in Nantucket (Moby-Dick provides a vital clue), winter in Vermont at a bed-and-breakfast (a lover’s triangle plus a bonus recipe for Victorian pudding), winter in Lancaster County among the Pennsylvania Dutch (Rosco must sort out samplers and crosswords to unravel a last will and testament), the New Year watching the Mummers’ Parade in Philadelphia as they muse on gangsters and their nicknames, and Christmas at a Cotswolds estate where a wife and her gardener lover disappeared a century ago. Cleverly, if not always credibly, the conclusions to the stories are revealed in the solutions to the crosswords included with each one. Readers may solve them on their own—the narratives provide many clues—or rely on the completed puzzles at the end. Sadly, recondite vocabulary and recourse to the Oxford English Dictionary often substitute for characterization and wit.
A generation ago, Stanley Ellin restively compared Golden Age detective fiction to crossword puzzles. Little did he know. The target audience for this volume are readers who can accept its highly artificial premise—mysteries solved exclusively by working out crossword puzzles—times five.