An Actual Bakerhaven Map Never Appears as A Clue for the Puzzle Lady

Summary: An actual Bakerhaven map never appears as A Clue for the Puzzle Lady, who admits to a drive-by acquaintance, not to walking tours, of the fictitious town.

crossword puzzle answers by Stessily; sample American-style crossword grid created from OpenOffice.org Calc by MeekMark: MeekMark, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

An actual Bakerhaven map never appears as A Clue for the Puzzle Lady, Cora Felton, who admits to drive-by acquaintance with, not walking tours of, the fictitious town anchored in southwestern Connecticut.

The mystery novel released Nov. 2, 1999, by Bantam Books begins at Bakerhaven cemetery not 100 yards (91.44 meters) from the fence confirming Clarksonville township limits. The first cadaver in the first 1.5 years of Dale Harper’s police chieftainship calls in the cemetery caretaker and the town ambulance paramedics and medical examiner. Author Parnell Hall (Oct.31, 1944-Dec. 15, 2020) divulges no home or work destinations apart the green-shuttered, white-walled antique shop deeded by Jackson Dooley as police station.

The police station, on downtown, three-block Main Street, ensures excellent enjoyment of the town library across the street and of Cushman’s Bake Shop down the street.

Antique shops and pharmacy, laundromat and pizza parlor, gas stations and supermarkets respectively fit into black-, green-, yellow-shuttered, white-walled Main Street; side streets; and town outskirts.

Two bottom floors of a south-end three-story, on Center Street running east-west off Main Street, around the corner from the post office guards the Bakerhaven Gazette. It harbors a private nursery school for Sherry Carter, Cora Felton’s niece and roommate in rented housing at 385 Cold Springs Road, to harvest substitute-teaching hours. The one-acre (4,046.86-meter) lot opposite a meadow includes breezeway, driveway and garage for Cora’s and Sherry’s red Toyota, wide front lawn and wooded back and sides.

Cora journeys, at no judicious speed and with no Bakerhaven map, to the two-story, white-walled, wood-framed town hall between Main Street’s Congregational church and county courthouse.

Cora knows Lois, south-side co-owner with husband Alan of Greely’s general store near McCreedy’s Folly covered bridge, through bridge games at Country Kitchen on Bakerhaven outskirts.

Bar and restaurant customers at Country Kitchen and patrons and staff at the white-walled, wide-porched, wood-framed Bakerhaven Library, launched in 1886, leak crime solving-related local lore. Bakerhaven elementary school and Bakerhaven high school respectively manifest a one-plus-mile (1.61-plus-kilometer) distance from Country Kitchen’s one side and a 0.5-mile (0.81-kilometer) distance from its other. Bakerhaven High nets a dumpster in the rear, a soccer field back from the road and a drop-off circle for buses niched elsewhere outside school hours.

A Bakerhaven map offers what A Clue for the Puzzle Lady obscures: operational occupancies of the Channel 8 television station and of the county prosecutor office.

His flower and vegetable gardens prettify Harper predecessor Ed Hodges’ unkempt ranch house preserving cracked shingles, dangling drainpipe and peeling paint on a north-side wooded lot.

The blue-shuttered, white-walled two-story at 325 Maple Street, 4 miles (6.44 kilometers) from the Oak intersection, qualifies as out-of-town residence for Aaron Grant and his parents. Edith and son Jimmy Potter reside near their library responsibilities even as veterinary offices, before the hilltop Timlin residence, require a 2-mile (3.22-kilometer) ride down Locust. Mike Johnson shutting Old Mill Inn on Clemson Drive sends superior food-seekers to New Haven, whose Crime Lab and Examiner of Questioned Documents serve Bakerhaven police.

A Bakerhaven map and Reynold’s Ride, trustiest car service in the taxicab-less town, tell where Barbara Burnside, Kevin Roth and Billy Spires turned in each night.

Parnell Hall, author of A Clue for the Puzzle Lady, first book in the Puzzle Lady Mystery Series: Parnell Hall Books @parnellhallbooks, via Facebook Oct. 3, 2010

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

crossword puzzle answers by Stessily; sample American-style crossword grid created from OpenOffice.org Calc by MeekMark: MeekMark, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:American_crossword.png

Parnell Hall, author of A Clue for the Puzzle Lady, first book in the Puzzle Lady Mystery Series: Parnell Hall Books @parnellhallbooks, via Facebook Oct. 3, 2010, @ https://www.facebook.com/parnellhallbooks/posts/156933914327683/

For further information:

Hall, Parnell. 2019. Lights! Camera! Puzzles! New York NY; London UK: Pegasus Crime.

Hall, Parnell. 2018. The Purloined Puzzle. New York NY: Minotaur Books, A Thomas Dunne Book, an imprint of St. Martin's Press.

Hall, Parnell. 2017. A Puzzle To Be Named Later. New York NY: Minotaur Books, A Thomas Dunne Book, an imprint of St. Martin's Press.

Hall, Parnell. 2016. Presumed Puzzled. New York NY: Minotaur Books, A Thomas Dunne Book, an imprint of St. Martin's Press.

Hall, Parnell. 2015. Puzzled Indemnity. New York NY: Minotaur Books, A Thomas Dunne Book, an imprint of St. Martin's Press.

Hall, Parnell. 2014. NYPD Puzzle. New York NY: Minotaur Books, A Thomas Dunne Book, an imprint of St. Martin's Press.

Hall, Parnell. 2013. Arsenic and Old Puzzles. New York NY: Minotaur Books, A Thomas Dunne Book, an imprint of St. Martin's Press.

Hall, Parnell. 2012. $10,000 in Small, Unmarked Puzzles. New York NY: Minotaur Books, A Thomas Dunne Book, an imprint of St. Martin's Press.

Hall, Parnell. 2011. The Kenken Killings. New York NY: Minotaur Books, A Thomas Dunne Book, an imprint of St. Martin's Press.

Hall, Parnell. 2010. The Puzzle Lady vs. The Sudoku Lady. New York NY: Minotaur Books, A Thomas Dunne Book, an imprint of St. Martin's Press.

Hall, Parnell. 2009. Dead Man's Puzzle. New York NY: Minotaur Books, A Thomas Dunne Book for Minotaur Books, an imprint of St. Martin's Press.

Hall, Parnell. 2008. The Sudoku Puzzle Murders. New York NY: Thomas Dunne Books St. Martin's Minotaur, an imprint of St. Martin's Press.

Hall, Parnell. 2006. You Have the Right to Remain Puzzled. New York NY: Bantam Books, division of Random House, Inc.

Hall, Parnell. 2005. Stalking the Puzzle Lady. New York NY: Bantam Books, division of Random House, Inc.

Hall, Parnell. 2004. And a Puzzle to Die On. New York NY: Bantam Books, division of Random House, Inc.

Hall, Parnell. 2003. With This Puzzle, I Thee Kill. New York NY: Bantam Books, division of Random House, Inc.

Hall, Parnell. 2002. A Puzzle in a Pear Tree. New York NY: Bantam Books, division of Random House, Inc.

Hall, Parnell. 2001. Puzzled to Death. New York NY: Bantam Books, division of Random House, Inc.

Hall, Parnell. 2000. Last Puzzle & Testament. New York NY: Bantam Books, division of Random House, Inc.

Hall, Parnell. 1999. A Clue for the Puzzle Lady. New York NY: Bantam Books, division of Random House, Inc.

"Puzzle Lady." Parnell Hall.com > Books. Website by Kate Anchev/Outbox Online Design Studio.
Available @ http://parnellhall.com/puzzle-lady/