Thursday Thriller: The Puzzle Master by Danielle Trussoni

I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

The Puzzle Master by Danielle Trussoni

Mogsy’s Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Genre: Mystery, Thriller

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: Random Houes (June 13, 2023)

Length: 384 pages

Author Information: Website | Twitter

The Puzzle Master by Danielle Trussoni has been pushed hard as the perfect book for fans of Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code, but while I would agree that the story contains certain cerebral and paranormal elements that would appeal to that audience, it is also weaker in areas that sometimes made this a confusing and disjointed read.

The novel follows protagonist Mike Brink who rose to fame as a brilliant and inventive puzzle maker after a high school football injury left him with a real but rare condition called savant syndrome. The resulting synesthesia allowed him to see the world differently, granting him the extraordinary ability to recognize patterns at a glance. Suddenly, he could solve puzzles in ways no one else can, but like most gifts, it also came with a cost. He began struggling in social settings with his interactions with others, leading to isolation and loneliness. Following his graduation from MIT, he retreated into a quiet life as a puzzle creator for the New York Times, with only his beloved dachshund Connie (short for Conundrum) for company.

Everything changes when Brink is contacted by a prison psychologist with a request for him to meet with a notorious inmate named Jess Price. Once a promising young writer, Jess was convicted and sentenced to thirty years in prison for murdering her boyfriend, which was five years ago, and she hasn’t spoken a word since. Recently though, she has drawn a baffling puzzle, prompting the prison to consult with Brink. On his first meeting with the prisoner, our protagonist immediately senses something wrong with her silence, suspecting that there is more to her murder conviction. Clearly there is a greater mystery here that would involve more than solving her strange puzzle, one that will put Brink on the path to discover ancient secrets of Jewish mysticism and place him in the crosshairs of some powerful enemies.

In my opinion, The Puzzle Master was an enjoyable read, but there were also a number of issues that held it back from true greatness or even earning a solid four-star rating. The biggest of these was the focus—or the lack thereof. Trussoni appears to have subscribed to the “everything but the kitchen sink” method when it comes to storytelling. In a word, this book was STUFFED. Crammed to the brim with ideas, the plot was hard to follow as readers are jerked from one subject to the next. We have a puzzle master and a compelling mystery to solve, one that might possibly exonerate a woman who was wrongfully imprisoned—that I can handle. But it was when the story started veering off into “out there” territory that it started to lose me, with possessed porcelain dolls, secret societies, cyber security and quantum computing, Jewish Kabbalah, alternate dimensions and more all being mashed into a few hundred pages. Honestly, it’s hard describing what this book is even about, let alone determining its genre.

For novel called The Puzzle Master starring a protagonist who actually builds and solves puzzles for a living, I was also disappointed by the scarcity of puzzles involved in the plot. There weren’t that many flashes of inspiration, sparks of insight, or mind-blowing revelations from our characters, and Brink, whose cleverness and problem-solving skills are being hyped up constantly, seems to display relatively ordinary intellect in most situations. Of course, all of this is totally fine, for a standard mystery thriller. That is, the story is perfectly readable and entertaining, and I think most will find it worth reading. However, for a book that was really pitching the puzzle angle as a hook, I confess I was expecting a little more.

To conclude, The Puzzle Master was a quick and interesting read featuring lots of different topics, though none are really explored in any great depth on account of the sheer number of ideas packed into the story. This led to a plot that sometimes felt discombobulated and chaotic. Overall, I had a good time, but I feel that readers hoping for something more like The DaVinci Code will want to adjust expectations.