Book Description

Four holiday whodunits in one—the perfect present for puzzle fans! “Light-hearted capers . . . Each as frothy as a cup of good eggnog” (The Wall Street Journal). Together, crossword editor and amateur sleuth Belle Graham and her private detective husband, Rosco Polycrates, are “a great investigative team in the tradition of Nick and Nora” (Bookbrowse). In this holiday-themed collection—featuring two story anthologies and two novels by national bestselling author Nero Blanc—Belle and Rosco follow the clues and fill in the blanks to find the answers to some very puzzling mysteries. A Crossworder’s Holiday: In these five short mysteries, Belle and Rosco solve puzzles in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, Nantucket, and a haunted house in the Cotswolds. Perhaps the most challenging is the case of mobster Freddy Five Fingers, who was sending tip-offs to the cops via crosswords printed in the local tabloid—before he croaked. A Crossworder’s Gift: Five more Yuletide mysteries take Belle and Rosco from sunny St. Lucia where they decipher clues to find a buried treasure to a blizzard that strands a sewing circle. And in Las Vegas, a high roller has strewn clues throughout his suite to form a crossword puzzle that leads to loot. Wrapped Up in Crosswords: With Christmas approaching, Belle does her part creating a Noel crossword contest while Rosco dons a red suit and snowy-white beard to collect toys for the town’s annual children’s drive. But his good will starts to dim when he and two Newcastle Police Department colleagues are mistaken for escaped convicts masquerading as small-town Santas. A Crossworder’s Delight: Just in time for the holidays at Newcastle’s historic Paul Revere Inn, Belle discovers an abandoned treasure: a book of dessert recipes written in the form of crosswords handed down from mother to daughter. But as nice as that is, someone else has been naughty: A valuable Longfellow poem has been stolen from its place of honor on the wall of the inn’s front parlor. As he starts to investigate, Rosco finds himself with a new sleuthing partner, twelve-year-old E. T. Whitman—a bit of a wordsmith himself.