by Danielle Trussoni
“Puzzle’s are composed of patterns. They are meant to be solved.” (Trussoni).
If you like Dan Brown’s Da Vinci’s code, you’ll love The Puzzle Master.
When our hero Mike Brink was young he suffered a concussion playing high school football. When he awoke, he was suddenly aware “there was a system, an essential order to the world” (Trussoni) He saw it” as patterns…patterns everywhere. At first, “all he knew was that he was experiencing highly structured geometric hallucinations on a regular basis” (Trussoni) After years of learning how to live with his “gift” Brink made a name for himself as the foremost puzzlemaker of the world. As such, he is asked by psychologist Dr. Moses to make sense of a puzzle created by Jess Prince, one of her patients who is herself “living in a puzzle”. Ms Prince, famous writer now infamous murderer, is serving her sentence at the New York State Correctional Facility abd has taken to communicating in complex cryptic symbols.
When Brink meets Miss Prince he feels a strange connection and they have a surprisingly intimate encounter where Prince secretly passes him another puzzle.
Soon Mike finds himself in a world of rare porcelain dolls, the supernatural, and ancient Hasidic texts which are all as intricately connected as the diagramed puzzles Trussoni includes in her text.
I had forgotten I liked Trussoni’s writing (read Angelology a decade ago).The Puzzle Master was an easy thrilling read and a great story to reintroduce me to Danielle Trussoni’s writing. Now I have to go back and read her titles I’ve missed.
This novel will not be published until June 2023
Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for the advanced copy!
Ink And Spine 