The Puzzle Master
Danielle Trussoni
Random House, 2023, $27
Fans of thrillers with a touch of history will enjoy Danielle Trussoni’s latest puzzle-within-a puzzle page turner, The Puzzle Master, out this month. The intricate plot takes readers from a women’s prison in the Adirondacks to 19th-century Prague and back farther to the writings of a Jewish mystic in the 1200s. The action revolves around Mike Brink, a widely admired puzzle maker with a reputation for clever and challenging puzzles who is urgently called to Ray Brook, a women’s correctional facility in upstate New York by Dr. Thessaly Moses, psychiatrist to convicted criminal Jess Price. Though Price has barely communicated with her shrink, she has a puzzle she desperately needs Mike Brink to solve.
Brink’s talent as a master puzzle solver (and creator of New York Times puzzles) comes from an unexpected high school football injury that left him with a rare condition—sudden acquired savant syndrome—which gives him synesthesia and an uncanny ability to see patterns not only in puzzles but in words and images as well. Though Mike’s post-high school life has included remarkable professional success and a breeze through MIT, he’s connected with few people, and almost no women. Price’s request intrigues him. Her incarceration stems from a highly publicized crime that left a man dead in an historic mansion in Columbia County where Price was house sitting at the time. Price was an unlikely suspect, as she had been an up-and-coming darling of the literary world only weeks before. She has summoned Mike Brink to Ray Brook to show him a mysterious puzzle she found in the house and when they meet, they form an intense connection neither quite understands.
What follows is a complex plot that sees Mike followed by a paid thug who’s set on using him for his puzzling powers but determined to keep him far away from the treasure the puzzle holds. Along the way, the reader meets some bad actors at the intersection of art and technology and is treated to a colorful backstory of European porcelain dollmaking and more than a few details about Kabbalah.
The cast of supporting characters is rich—the Howard Hughes-like Jameson Sedge, a man desperate to find an elusive God Puzzle hidden in an ancient text that “when used properly, will alter the way mankind sees the past, present, and future”; Cullen Withers, the overworked director of the Morgan Library; and Conundrum (or Connie), Mike’s beloved emotional support dog—and all play a role in solving the book’s mystery. The setup is fresh, the historical puzzle idiosyncratic. The novel’s focus on the double back stories—of the God Puzzle created by 13th-century Jewish mystic Abraham Abulafia and the 19th-century French doll maker who discovers the power of the puzzle and its potential for destruction—occasionally obscure the present-day plot.
As the book gets deeper into the intricacies of Kabbalah and Abulafia’s manuscript, the reader loses sight of Price a bit and why all the others are driven to solve her puzzle. The history of Lilith, a Judeo-Christian demon spirit at the heart of the mystery, proves to be the reason Jess Price is in danger.
Among my favorite characters is Aurora Sedge, a deceased spinster aunt whose reclusive life in a creepy Hudson Valley estate among porcelain dolls is vividly rendered. The scenes of Jess Price’s short stay at Sedge House and her discovery of Violaine, a one-of-a-kind porcelain doll with the “scent of powder and dust and old silk” are riveting. The book includes a few scenes in a remote Hudson Valley hideaway and a turn on the campus of Bard College, adding local color.
Overall, readers who like historical thrillers will enjoy The Puzzle Master. Mike Brink is a worthy hero with well-defined and distinctive characteristics on which to hang a suspenseful story. The book demands an interest in the historical tension between human and divine for the reader to feel a real payoff at the end.
Danielle Trussoni will speak with Will Shortz about The Puzzle Master at the Beacon LitFest on June 17. A preview of the event can be found on page 62.
—Betsy Maury
The Work: A Jigsaw Memoir
Zachary Sklar
Olive Press, 2022, $19.95
Olivebridge author Sklar’s childhood as the son of a father on the Hollywood blacklist nurtured a passion for integrity and fairness. The essays in this collection illuminate seminal adventures: living among the Gullah people on Daufuskie Island in South Carolina as a college kid in 1969, picking coffee in the Nicaraguan mountains in the era of the contras, editing the works of CIA whistleblowers for Sheridan Square Press, which led to writing the script for Oliver Stone’s JFK, which landed him on an unwritten blacklist himself.
The Empty Kayak
Jode Millman
Level Best Books, 2023, $16.95
An engaged couple go kayaking on the Hudson and only one returns—a familiar scenario to those who recall the story of Angelika Graswald (known in the tabloid press as the Kayak Killer), whose fiance, Vincent Viafore, drowned in 2015. Poughkeepsie lawyer and author Millman takes the case as broad inspiration for the third in her award-winning Queen City Crimes series, crafting a juicy, fast-paced page turner rich in you-are-there procedural detail and intermingled motivations, played out by a lively ensemble cast of cops, lawyers and miscreants.
Death, Resurrection, and the Spirit of New Orleans: Jazz on the Tube Conversations
Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube Books, 2023, $9.99
When catastrophic flooding devastated New Orleans in 2006, much was rightfully made of the government’s shamefully slow, fumbling efforts to be of use. Not much was said of the locals who stepped up to do the real work of breathing life back into the city. In a compilation of his conversations with those who lived it, Tivoli author McCarthy, publisher of the vast Jazz on the Tube video library, sheds light on that aftermath and the pivotal role of the city’s unparalleled musical culture in its revival.
Hyman
Lawrence Bush
Ben Yehuda Press, 2023, $18.95
Accord resident Bush, editor emeritus of Jewish Currents magazine, has created an unforgettable character in Hyman, a charismatic rabbi whose spiritual roots and social conscience have crystallized into what some might call a cult, others a wellspring of spiritual refreshment. At 83, he’s confronting the aftermath of guerilla shenanigans, radical pronouncements, and assorted sexual adventures. In Bush’s capable hands, it’s a laugh-out-loud comedy of manners coupled with an insightful look at Judaism in the latter half of the 20th century.
We Beat Back the Fascists
Spencer Kroll
Kroll, 2022, $16.95
In 1949, as Paul Robeson was preparing for his third annual show in Peekskill, the US was sliding into the icy waters of the Red Scare, and the Peekskill Evening Star was one of several influential players stoking hatred and fear among local combat vets. The concert was postponed after violent attacks; the second attempt drew thousands of supporters and still further viciousness, and the authorities sided with the attackers. Kroll’s novel blends historical sources with fictional reconstruction to underscore the dangers of fear and division.
—Anne Pyburn Craig
This article appears in June 2023.
