BookBrowse Reviews The Puzzle Master by Danielle Trussoni

BookBrowse:

Danielle Trussoni's The Puzzle Master is a clever supernatural thriller that's both intricately layered and powerfully propulsive.

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I had planned to bring Danielle Trussoni's The Puzzle Master along on a recent vacation trip. I first picked it up two days before leaving town, and even though my pre-travel to-do list was as long as my arm, I found myself sneaking reading time in between laundry loads and last-minute errands. Before I knew it, I had polished off the novel and needed to find new vacation reading material—it's such a propulsive, brainy beach read that you just might finish it before even getting to the shore.

The novel opens as its protagonist, Mike Brink, is en route to the New York State Correctional Facility for women in Ray Brook, having been summoned there by the head psychologist Thessaly Moses. Brink is not a psychologist or a lawyer; his claim to fame is as an expert solver and constructor of puzzles, which is why Dr. Moses has reached out to him. An inmate named Jess Price has drawn an intricate and perplexing puzzle, one Moses wants to see if Brink can help solve. Price, a talented writer, was convicted of violently killing her boyfriend while at a writing retreat, and she's now become a shell of her former self. Moses is hoping that a solution to the puzzle might help her get through to this enigmatic patient.

Brink, a one-time star quarterback who developed his remarkable facility with puzzles (not to mention a photographic memory and a synesthetic ability to see numbers as colors) after a career-ending football hit that permanently rewired his brain, has never met a puzzle he couldn't solve, but Price's might just be his first stumper. He's intrigued enough to take up the challenge, especially when he finds himself inexplicably drawn to Price, with whom he feels the kind of instantaneous, visceral emotional connection that's been elusive since his accident.

Brink soon realizes that Moses is not the only one following Price's case carefully, and that other, powerful forces are eager to solve the puzzle for their own reasons. His increasingly dangerous quest takes him deep into a centuries-old mystery, one with connections to both Jewish mysticism and the modern-day technocratic elite. Trussoni, whose previous novels include a duology about angels, employs some supernatural elements, which complement the thriller plot. Readers who usually eschew the fantastical, however, will find the novel well-grounded in the real world; Trussoni's research is adeptly woven throughout, and the story develops through a variety of interconnected narratives, with diaries and archival letters appearing alongside Brink's present odyssey.

Filled with puzzles, codes, and clues, The Puzzle Master has been drawing plenty of comparisons to The Da Vinci Code, and rightly so; like Brown's wildly popular thriller, Trussoni has developed an intriguing protagonist with a surprising skillset, and she takes inspiration from arcane historical sources. The Puzzle Master, however, is more formally complex than Brown's novel, and in many ways more rewarding. Whether readers are avid puzzle solvers or just fans of sharp, intricate thrillers, they'll be eager to spend more time with Mike Brink, who's due to star in a sequel, The Puzzle Box, out next year.

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in July 2023, and has been updated for the April 2024 edition. Click here to go to this issue.