Short Book Reviews: Puzzles Can't Carry the Plot

 The Puzzle Master,by Danielle Trussoni (Random House)

After a traumatic brain injury leaves him with a genius forconstructing and solving puzzles, Mike Brink embarks upon a real-life riddle: novelistJess Price, in prison for committing a notorious murder, pleads to see him inperson although they have never met. She slips a baffling cipher to him, the “GodPuzzle.” In trying to figure out what happened the night of the murder, whatpresent danger has Jess terrified, and what the cipher means, Mike gets drawninto a twisted, generations-long story of forbidden arcane knowledge with thepower to transform technology and humanity itself.

I loved the beginning of the book, especially the passagesin which Mike sees puzzles as luminous patterns. Other than the occasionalcrossword, I’m not much for puzzles, so this “look-inside” was fascinating. Asthe story went on, with diaries telling stories-within-stories, I lostemotional connection with Mike. I distrusted his attraction to Jess as one morepasted-on artificial element. (It turned out there was a reason for the allure,but I didn’t see the signals that supernatural forces were at work.) Longpassages that had nothing to do with Mike’s present quest intensified the emotionaldetachment. Three-quarters of the book, a series of characters arrived andproceeded, very much deus ex machina, to solve Mike’s problems for himwhile dumping huge, indigestible chunks of exposition. This part read as if twocompletely different books had been jammed together. Despite scattered sceneswith action, the remainder of the book proceeded with very little sense thateverything had been building to this point. In the end, Mike did relativelylittle to achieve his own goal or solve his own problems. The book was billedas a “thriller,” but the last part did a good job putting me to sleep. Which istoo bad, really, because the material about puzzles was fascinating.