Blanc, Nero: The Crossword Connection

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Crossword editor Annabelle Graham--nicknamed AnnaGram in some quarters--and her sleuth of a fiance Rosco Polycrates are back and ready to tie the knot in this third installment in the crossword mystery series by (the pseudonymous) Nero Blanc. This time around, two people are dead and a dog's gone missing, and someone is harassing Belle with threatening, home-made crosswords. As usual, readers get to solve the puzzles along with Belle (there are six of them), though most of us will not have the facility with words that our heroine enjoys. She can dash off a handful of eight-letter words for "criminal" without pausing to think.

The Nero Blanc books are good little mysteries and fast reads. What makes them particularly appealing, however, for those of us who like puzzles, is the incorporation of crosswords into the stories and the occasional focus on Belle Graham's admirable verbal gymnastics.