Mystères croisés : Le Manoir de tous les secrets

Our Crossword mystery girl Lacey Chabert is trying to create a crossword puzzle with a magic theme. She and her detective friend Brennan Elliott go to a place advertised as The House Of Magic where a David Copperrfield type magician entertains and holds court for aspiring magicians.

In a performance where magician Noam Jenkins allegedly catches a bullet with his teeth it goes wrong and the illusion goes wrong. With a homicide cop on the scene, the investigation begins right away.

All I'll say is that Jenkins had some interesting and illegal sidelines. And the assistant for him that night Kaitlyn Leeb finds herself in danger.

A nice plot with an interesting twist at the end.

6/10 - pretty good and super twisty for a HMM feature

This one was very good, definitely my favorite! Plenty of guesswork and a couple of really great "scary" moments. Loved it!

When a famous magician drops dead in the middle of a performance, in front of a packed crowd, could this seemingly natural death actually be murder? Tess Harper (Chabert), the New York Sentinel Crosswords editor is once again teamed up with NYPD's finest detective, Logan O'Connor (Elliott). The two have to find a way to work together to uncover the challenging clues to solve this murder.

Strange how Logan repetitively tells Tess to not get involved in the case, despite the fact that she has solved the case a few times already. Does Tess listen? No- and thank goodness for that or else the case of magician's catching the bullet trick wouldn't be solved, but after the usually nosing around by Tess and Logan. It's a good mystery, boosted by the world of illusionists. Mystery and magic work hand to hand I think. Love the title!

The low ratings are due to anger at Hallmark promoting this like crazy and then switching at the last minute to one of their endless supply of Christmas movies. The audience for the mysteries is most likely not the same audience for the Christmas movies. Hallmark! Start a Christmas channel and keep your mysteries channel!! Have mysteries set at Christmas if you want, just give us mysteries!

The Crossword Mysteries is one of Hallmark's better mystery series. I've watched them all, love many of them, like some, tolerated some, etc etc. Here there is a really nice chemistry between the leads. Also they are both intelligent and thoughtful characters. Although all mysteries require a suspension of disbelief, this is so much less ridiculous than so many out there. In fact, in the world of mysteries, it is just about realistic. I grew up watching and reading mysteries with my Mom, so I have seen and read a ton. I really love Crossword Mysteries and look forward to the next!