Voulez-vous m'épouser?

Lyle (Kyle Buchanan), the victim, seemed to have everything going for him when he met with Tess days before his murder. A recently tenured history professor, he was getting ready to propose to his girlfriend, Abby, via crossword puzzle when he came in deadly contact with a ceramic knife. Suspicion turns to her because she's a chef and has whole sets of cutlery with which to kill people.

But she's not the only suspect - there's a few of them in this smoothly-plotted mystery that benefits a lot from the two leads, their chemistry adds to this rather fetching addition to a great series. Love how the lead duo bump into a each other and Brennan asks her what she's doing and that she shouldn't investigate. You would have thought by now he would just allow to do what wants - after all she helped solve the other cases.

6/10 - good second installment in the new Hallmark series

Most of us don't watch Hallmark movies expecting some great production. No, we watch them because we enjoy the actors and the characters they create. If the story is interesting then that is a bonus. We like Lacey Chabert, she always plays a likable character. As she does here, working for the New York newspaper and one of her ongoing responsibilities is the crossword puzzle. Seems when strangers meet her they always mention her puzzles.

One of her old friends is a history professor at a local college, as the movie starts we see that he is surprised at home and is found murdered. Then the movie flashes to "5 days earlier" and what we see are all the efforts to investigate the murder and find the guilty person.

The story is convoluted and interesting enough that it kept us entertained. As various people in his life became suspects I was surprised when the actual killer was revealed and the reasons why.

Streaming on Peacock, my wife and I watched it at home.

This is supposed to be set in New York City, but a cab had a white Ontario license plate. It's filmed in Toronto.

The cars being used by the people involved in the scenes had NY plates.

Guess they forgot to change the cab.

On a different note, Brennan's hair looks better in this second installment than as short as it was in the first one. I also like that he's not dressed in a suit and tie, but is dressed more casually.

Lacey's hair is better, too. They got rid of those long extensions.

Too bad they killed off Harris in the first one, though. He was a good actor.

It's been two months since Tess (Lacey Chabert) and Logan (Brennan Elliott) have last been together. Her friend Lyle asks her to encode his marriage proposal to girlfriend Abby in a crossword puzzle. Soon after, he is found murdered and Logan investigates.

The two leads try to build up some chemistry. They should concentrate on this part for the future of this franchise. It's a Hallmark mystery movie. The book cipher premise is grade school stuff. The fact that the police needs explanations makes them look stupid. The plot is not exceeding my expectations but is reasonably acceptable. At the end of the day, these are not high grade movies but this franchise has some legs... at least until someone cheats on their college entrance exam.