The two main characters of Danielle Trussoni's The Puzzle Master are very different people. One is a former college football player whose career was abruptly ended when he suffered a traumatic brain injury on the field. The other is a convicted murderer who has refused to speak to anyone since beginning her thirty-year prison sentence five years earlier. What the two have in common, and what ultimately brings them together, is an extraordinary puzzle solving ability.
Mike Brink's talent, however, is on a whole different level than Jess's. His brain injury left him with an extremely rare medical condition called acquired savant syndrome, and in Mike's case that translates into the ability to solve and create complicated puzzles in ways that seem superhuman to the rest of us. So when Jess Price seems to be trying to communicate with her prison psychiatrist via a puzzle she has created, the psychiatrist immediately calls Mike for help in making sense of the puzzle - and even invites him to the prison to meet Jess for himself.
After learning that Jess has solved every puzzle that he's ever published, including his weekly Times magazine contributions, Mike is looking forward to meeting her. But it is only when he learns that he is really there there at Jess's request, not the psychiatrist's - and he feels the physical attraction between the two of them - that Mike dedicates his every waking moment to figuring out the truth about what happened to her. Now he is as obsessed with Jess as he is with creating puzzles.
The Puzzle Master is a first rate thriller that puzzle fans are going to find especially intriguing. Inside is all the action that any thriller fan would ever want, but the key to Jess's freedom and Mike's survival boils down to Mike's ability to solve a thirteenth century puzzle that has already claimed the lives of some who dared spend too much time with it. Despite it being a thriller with a heavy dose of well researched facts about puzzle history and brain injuries, The Puzzle Master still requires an equally heavy dose of suspended disbelief from its readers.
But that's what thriller fans do...and we're pretty good at it.
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| Danielle Trussoni jacket photo |
(I also want to mention Trussoni's memoir Falling Through the Earth about her experience growing up with a Viet Nam vet father who was traumatized by his combat experiences. It is from 2007.)
The Puzzle Master's plot sounds intriguing to me.
ReplyDeleteIt's quite a plot, Terra, and the two main characters are very sympathetic ones, so it's a good read. It does go to a degree of mysticism that I'm not always comfortable with, especially during the novel's climax, so if you don't enjoy that kind of thing, it may drag for you in places. But that's all part of the puzzle solving hook, so...
DeleteSadly, I am not very good at puzzles but this sounds fun anyway. I am desperately trying to find a book my sister hasn't read for her birthday and this might be it!
ReplyDeleteI'm not very good at them either, but these are largely math and language based puzzles with lots of hidden messages in the answers, etc., so it was fun to read about them and watch how they were ultimately solved. Before you buy this one, take a look at my comment up above to Terra. I think that will help you decide wether or not this one will fit your sister's reading taste.
DeleteThis sounds very interesting, but the mysticism you mention might spoil my enjoyment. If I run into a copy at the book sale next year, I will give it a try. (It would be nice if I could stop buying books totally until the book sale next year, but that would never work.)
ReplyDeleteI hear you, Tracy. I can't stop myself from accumulating more books than I can ever possibly read during this lifetime.
DeleteHi Sam, The two characters Mike and Jess have suffered in their lives. Mike a serious brain injury and there is a story there with Jess as well. It sounds like a powerful book but for myself might it be too dark?
ReplyDeleteVery, very dark at times, Kathy. If that's not a tone you enjoy, I doubt that this is one for you.
DeleteHmm where did you hear about this author? I have not seen it around but I like puzzles -- both jigsaw & crossword -- so the idea of this one seems pretty good. Though I admit I've cut back on my thrillers over the years ... maybe somewhat due to having to suspend one's disbelief and others get sort of crazy.
ReplyDeleteI knew of her because of the memoir I mentioned at the end of the review. That memoir seemed so honest to me that I still consider it to be one of the best books of that type I've ever read. I hadn't seen any of her fiction around, though, and when this one came along, I became very curious.
DeleteI have to read this one...I love the whole idea of all those puzzles that need solving, especially that thirteenth century one. And Mike and Jess sound like very interesting characters.
ReplyDeleteThis is most definitely a book that puzzle lovers will be drawn towards, but honestly the puzzles were so far above my ahead that I barely understood them even after the solutions were explained. :-)
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