The Crossword Mysteries: Abracadaver

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!

"The only thing that would surprise me about you is if you had no surprises."-Logan to Tess

This episode of Crossword Mysteries entitled Abracadaver starts with Tess taking a slight of hand class at the Mystery Manor in New York. As a student, Tess is allowed to celebrate her birthday at the Mystery Manor where normally only members are allowed. We and Tess get a sneak peak of a new trick someone is testing out in one of the "practice" rooms...and then we see the same Magician, "the amazing Alastair and his assistant Bianca" perform on the night of Tess's birthday. Tess ends up with an extra seat at her table, so she invites the new crime writer at the paper...which is how she ends up seated between him and detective Logan for the show. Logan gives her a cute bracelet with a crossword charm for her birthday...and the new crime writer red roses, making you think there is going to be a little rivalry set up for Tess' affections.

The Mystery Manor is in a gorgeous old mansion and the evening's magician performs a disappearing watch with an audience member for his first trick and works up to a trick involving a revolver that Tess gets pulled in to helping out with. She writes her initials on the bullet that will be used in the "bullet catch" trick, the same one Tess witnessed in practice. The magician ends up dying in the performance of the trick and Logan ends up investing...telling Tess to leave it alone, of course!

"I just happen to be here because it's Tess' birthday and we're friends...you know that."-Logan to his partner Winston

Before Tess leaves for the evening to let the police do the investigating, she sees a beautiful woman ascend the staircase alone and Tess follows her, but looses her in a hallway to no where filled with props and historic posters.

"How many times do I have to hear your, 'Tess stay out of police business' speech?"-Tess "As long as you keep disregarding it."-Logan "You're like a paper that keeps printing the same puzzle, day after day after day..."-Tess

Tess goes down the rabbit hole to find an engineer of illusions named Sinclair, using a series of clues. Sinclair was larger than life and fascinating! But the real wonder of this episode is that Logan knows how to tango and there is a great twist with the mystery!

This show continues to get better and the chemistry between Logan and Tess continues to grow. Another solid entry in the hallmark movies and mysteries channel.

Her movies are a joy to watch and fun and entertaining. Great to watch for sad days. She is so cute she just lifts my spirits to watch this series. I hope there are more.

Tess Harper (Lacey Chabert) is taking magic class at The Magic Manor. She attends a show where the magician Alistair is murdered on stage. NYPD Lt. Logan O'Connor (Brennan Elliott) is assigned the case and finds that Tess is doing her own investigating again.

Hallmark is making this a mystery franchise on its channel. Chabert is a great lead to do one of these harmless murder mystery series. There are a couple of problematic issues. First, the series needs to manufacture a more compelling reason for Tess to keep getting involved in these crimes. It would be easier if she gets a column to write mysteries for the paper and she convinces Logan to be her source. Without that, she becomes Angela Lansbury serial killing across network TV and nobody has figured it out yet. Think about it. Everybody around her keeps dying and she gets the glory of solving each case. She's the killer.

The other issue is a lack of intensity. It's a matter of writing and directing. Of course, this is done on the cheap and one must excuse it to some extent. It takes a more imaginative mind to give this series some better action and thrills. Maybe it can add thrills through other means like a love triangle. It has the ingredients but it barely has a love duet. This is another aspect that desperately needs developing before this franchise can truly be successful.

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