Shannon's Library

LET’S GET EXCITED ABOUT THIS BOOK!

All the world is a puzzle, and Mike Brink – a celebrated and ingenious puzzle constructor – understands its patterns like no one else. Once a promising football star, Brink was transformed by a traumatic brain injury that cause a rare medical condition: acquired savant syndrome. The injury left him with a mental superpower – he can solve puzzles in ways ordinary people can’t. But it also left him deeply isolated, unable to fully connect with other people. Everything changes when Brink meets Jess Price, a woman serving thirty years in prison for murder who hasn’t spoken a word since her arrest five years earlier. When Price draws a perplexing puzzle, her psychiatrist believes that it will explain her crime and calls Brink to solve it. What begins as a desire to crack an alluring cipher quickly morphs into an obsession with Price herself. He soon reveals that there is something more urgent, and more dangerous, behind her silence, thrusting Brink into a hunt for the truth. The quest takes Brink through a series of interlocking enigmas, but the heart of the mystery is the God Puzzle, a cryptic ancient prayer circle created by the thirteenth-century Jewish mystic Abraham Abulafia. As Brink navigates a maze of clues, he realizes that there are powerful forces at work that he cannot escape, and the fate of mankind hangs in the balance.

Shannon’s Rating — PG-13 (3 f-words and some sexual content)

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LET’S TALK ABOUT THIS BOOK!

When this book first appeared on my radar it was billed as “The Da Vinci Code” meets “The Golem and the Jinni.” What??? Sold!!! You know me and my quest to read any and every book with a golem in it! Plus, my love for “The Golem and the Jinni” by Helene Wecker runs deep. So, naturally, I picked this one up right away!

Danielle Trussoni has talked about three inspirations for writing “The Puzzle Master.”

First, her love of puzzles. She said puzzles have always fascinated her and how “solving a puzzle is like experiencing a great story – there is a sense of wonder, and a desire to figure out how everything fits together.”

Second, her discovery of Savant Syndrome – a medical condition in which a person develops new talents after a traumatic brain injury. (Some people develop the ability to play classical music or to speak a new foreign language.) Trussoni knew right away that she wanted the hero of her book to have one of these unique abilities – specifically the ability to see and solve puzzles in an almost superhero fashion.

And third, a porcelain doll! Trussoni says, “I inherited an eerie porcelain doll from my great grandmother, and it has remained in my memory. I’d always wanted to include it in a novel, and it showed up here as Violaine.“

While we’re on the subject of porcelain dolls…do you find them cute and nostalgic or disturbing and creepy? Take a look at some of these pictures before you decide….

Disturbing and creepy it is!

I actually collected Madame Alexander porcelain dolls as a child and LOVED them! I have very fond memories of going with my mom each year to downtown Salt Lake City. In the very basement of ZCMI were the Madame Alexander dolls. I would pick out my very favorite one and she would then materialize at either my birthday or Christmastime. I used to keep some of these childhood dolls of mine in our current playroom closet for my kids to play with. No more, unfortunately. A few years ago, my son and his friends started refusing to play in our basement. Come to find out, they were freaked out by some “cursed” dolls that were lurking in the closet. My beloved porcelain dolls have now been relegated to a bin in my storage room – tucked safely away so no playing child will be “cursed.” Maybe someday I’ll get them out again for my granddaughter. Hopefully she’ll find them cute instead of creepy!

Anyway, back to “The Puzzle Master.” I thought this book was a fun, intellectual thriller – very much along the lines of “The Da Vinci Code,” by Dan Brown. I will say, the supernatural parts of the story got a little weird in the second half of the book. It delves pretty deep into Jewish mysticism and the storyline goes a little crazy. But, I didn’t mind it too much. “The Da Vinci Code” went a little crazy too into some strange cults and beliefs in ancient Catholicism. You have to take all of this craziness with a grain of salt and just go along for the ride as our heroes attempt to save the world!

All in all, this would be a great book to read in October. It definitely has some spooky parts, enough to make me look around and make sure my bedroom door was locked. (I wouldn’t want anything to creep out of a specific storage room bin, buried deep in my basement. Just saying.)

FYI…”The Puzzle Master” is the first in a series. The second book entitled, “The Puzzle Box,” comes out sometime next year. It will bring Mike Brink to Japan as he tries to solve the most dangerous and difficult puzzle of his career. Can’t wait to read more about this unique protagonist and his intriguing puzzle-solving “superpower!”