A Puzzling Death

When the newspaper eulogizes Deborah O’Nair, well-known cryptic crossword puzzle composer of New Orleans, by running the unfinished puzzle with her obituary, one of her more devoted fans—a semi-retired physician named Galimatias—quickly sees that one of the clues suggests foul play.

This unpromising sleuth—potbellied, messy, and given to florid speech that obscures his fundamental shrewdness—enlists the reluctant aid of his houseguest, Aramus Limpkin, a young history professor anxious to prove worthy of his first sabbatical. Together they attempt to bring the police around to the doctor’s rather tenuous way of thinking.

The police investigation, headed by the swaggering Detective Sergeant Mink Fleming and his conscientious but naive rookie assistant, Hazel Catkin, is hardly less inept than the doctor’s own fumbling attempts to uncover the truth.

But in the end, the truth is revealed. And along the way, Aramus learns the secrets of working cryptic crossword puzzles. Four cryptic crossword puzzles revealing some answers pertinent to the mystery are included for the reader to solve.