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Book Review: The Puzzle Box by Danielle Trussoni

Cover art for The Puzzle Box by Danielle Trussoni

The Puzzle Box by Danielle Trussoni

Random House, 2024

ISBN: 9780593595321

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

Buy: Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com

 

 

Part mystery, part puzzle, and all thrills, The Puzzle Box is a knockout.  For all those that loved The Da Vinci Code, this one’s for you.  With maddening puzzles, a genius as the protagonist, and a wild pursuit around the country of Japan, it’s just as good, and in some ways, better.

 

The lead, Mike Brink, is a mathematical genius with an eidetic memory, who gained his ability after a brain injury.  It’s called “acquired savant syndrome”, and it’s a real thing.  Mike is contacted by the Emperor of Japan for help in solving a sacred puzzle box that has bedeviled the imperial family for centuries.  Inside may be a secret important to the future of Japan as a nation.  The problem is that the puzzle box is not only difficult, it’s lethal.  If Mike makes a mistake opening it, he can’t try again: he won’t be around for another attempt.

 

What makes this a great story?  The pace is frenetic: it never slows a whit, right up to the end.  The author does an outstanding job of incorporating the history of  Japanese emperors, shoguns and samurai into the story.  The book’s setting, with ancient shrines, forgotten buildings, and snow-covered bamboo forests, is the perfect backdrop for a treasure hunt, much better than just using a series of cities, as in The Da Vinci Code.

 

The pursuit angle adds urgency to the pacing, as the Emperor isn’t the only one interested in the puzzle box contents.  Artificial intelligence is a big part of the chase, and the story credibly shows how AI can easily be more dangerous than any mortal element in our technology-enslaved world.  A cautionary tale, perhaps?  As for the puzzles… it’s more than the puzzle box itself:  that’s just the start of the clues that lead Brink and his cohorts across Japan, racing to beat the clock.  There is a window of time that the puzzle can be solved in, which helps drive the book’s pacing even faster.  The puzzle box itself doesn’t do anything magic, but it’s just as dangerous as the Lemarchand Configuration from the Hellraiser series.  Mistakes opening the box (and some of the other puzzles) can lead to amputated digits, poisoning, and more.  The puzzles are the perfect backbone to build one hell of a thrill ride on, and The Puzzle Box is all of that, and more.

 

What more do you really need to know?  The chances of readers not liking this book are approximately zero. It should take the country by storm the way The Da Vinci Code did…and that’s the BOTTOM LINE!  Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

Posted on December 21, 2024 by , Reply

Book Review: When Cicadas Cry by Caroline Cleveland

Cover art for When Cicadas Cry by Caroline Cleveland

When Cicadas Cry by Caroline Cleveland

Union Square & Co, 2024

ISBN 978-1-4549-5231-2

ISBN 978-1-4549-5232-9  (e-book)

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy:  Amazon.com | Bookshop.org

 

When Cicadas Cry by Caroline Cleveland is an engaging murder mystery.

 

A beautiful, young, white woman is bludgeoned to death in rural South Carolina church. A young black accountant, covered in blood, crouches over her. In the eyes of the prosecutor and most of the whites in the town, the young man’s guilt is clear. A disgraced lawyer reluctantly agrees to defend the young man in what seems like a lost cause. But he must also deal with ra town torn by racial tensions.

 

Thirty-four years earlier, two teenage girls were murdered in the same town. Their case was never solved. As a novel approach, the author weaves the first-person voice of the true killer into the plot. The reader is challenged to identify the killer among the novel’s many characters.

 

The author, being a practicing lawyer, weaves interesting insights about lawyerly thinking and courtroom procedures into her story. The novel’s style and plot twists will remind readers of mysteries by other lawyer-novelists, such as John Grisham.

 

Recommended: young adults

 

Contains: gore, mild sex

 

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee

Posted on May 8, 2024 by , Reply

Book Review: The Den by Cara Reinard

The Den by Cara Reinard

Thomas and Mercer, Dec. 2022

ISBN: 9781542039765

Availability: paperback, Kindle

 

Cara Reinard’s The Den recycles a tried and true plotline used countless times, and keeps it entertaining enough to ignore that there really aren’t any original twists to the plotline.  You know exactly what you’re getting ahead of time, but it’s fun enough that you don’t care about the lack of originality.

 

In this case, the plot is the trope”‘rich dad with estranged children is about to die and leave inheritance to offspring, all of whom have reason to want him dead.” If you’ve seen the movie Knives Out, then you know the majority of the book plot.  In The Den, the only stab at something new is that if any of the four siblings die before the old man, their share of the inheritance is split among the other siblings.  The rest is standard fare in the book: all the kids have financial problems, and they are all screw-ups in one way or another.  

 

Any of “inheritance plotline” books just need to follow some simple rules to be worth reading.  One, everyone needs to be a suspect and have motive.  Two, the killer or killers’ identities are well hidden until the end of the book.  Three, the author can’t get carried away with their own cleverness and make the mystery too convoluted.  Finally, the book needs to be entertaining.  With The Den, the author succeeds on all four counts.  There are other suspects besides the siblings: the housekeepers, servants and their families all have reason for murder, so there’s a big enough cast of characters to keep the reader guessing.  The identity of the villain(s) is well-concealed until the very end: the majority of readers probably won’t guess correctly, and that’s what is supposed to happen in a book like this.  The plot is twisting enough and clues are scattered throughout, but it doesn’t get too difficult to follow.  Readers will get to the end and feel it made sense. Most importantly, the book is entertaining.  The pacing is quick enough with no wasted time or pointless plot offshoots, and it’s enough to keep the pages flipping.  With a book like this, that’s all you’re looking for.

 

Bottom line: this is predictable fun.  Readers who enjoy mysteries are likely to enjoy this one.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson.

Posted on April 6, 2023 by , Reply
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