The Puzzle Box by Lisa Adair

(31. - 1214.) - The Puzzle Box by Lisa Adair - In August of 1985 Amy Young, 16 years old, is living with her aunt, Jeannie Young, in the fictional small town of Glenmere in northern Saskatchewan. Between them they work four jobs to sort of make ends meet. They hope there might be some money from the estate of Dorothy Young, Amy’s grandmother, but the lawyer has been waiting months for documents and has not even read the will to the family. 

Amy is a cashier for $4.25 per hour at Family Grocer’s. Her aunt works as a part-time receptionist during the day for the town doctor and as a waitress at Frankie’s Diner in the evening. The Diner uniform is “an orange striped shirt, black dress pants, and a blue apron with matching orange ruffles”. Amy occasionally busses tables and washes dishes at the Diner.

Amy had been living with her grandmother at the family farm because her mother died when she was 6. She does not know her father. Her grandmother had collapsed in town and died a few months earlier. Aunt Jeannie is her only relative and that is by marriage. It is Uncle John, Aunt Jeannie’s unlamented and long gone ex, who was her grandmother’s son.

Every dollar is hard earned and extra food from the diner is appreciated.

While not discussed in the book the mid-1980’s were a hard time for rural Saskatchewan. Grain prices were down and farms were struggling to survive. I remember dealing with too many clients in deep financial trouble.

Grandma Dorothy had told Amy that a puzzle box at the farm was “something really special. She said that, if I could open it, I would have everything I ever wanted”. It is a wooden box with little panels.

A shifty stranger is in town trying not to draw attention to himself. 

Break-ins are occurring and modest items pilfered.

The meeting with the lawyer and the distribution of the estate were not plausible to me as a lawyer. There are multiple legal issues with the will and the marital status of Aunt Jeannie and Uncle John. Had it been said the will was a holograph will instead of a will prepared by a lawyer there would have more credibility.

Thankfully Amy reports matters to the police. She would not have been a credible investigator. More authors should give the police a meaningful role.

Later proceedings in Court and the actions of a criminal defence lawyer were so wrong I was gritting my teeth in exasperation.

A small issue but a matter that shows the extent of an author’s research, for authors depicting Canadian court proceedings there are no gavels in Canadian courts.

The plot stretched my suspension of disbelief. Partly because I am a lawyer and partly because the plot has both a mysterious stranger who is pretending to be a local and another mysterious stranger.

What kept me reading were the small town characters and their interactions. The residents of Glenmere are believable. The convrsations are real. Their personalities fit rural Saskatchewan.

Amy is a nice young woman. The losses in her life have shaken her but she is doing her best to move ahead.

I expect it was a coincidence that in consecutive years I have read mysteries set in small town Saskatchewan written by women and featuring a sleuth who is a teenage girl dealing with profound family loss. Last year it was A Snake in the Raspberry Patch by Joanne Jackson which won a Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence.

Adair has significant work to do on her plotting of a mystery and her research. She is skilled at creating a premise and characters.