The Puzzle Box

August 2, 2024

The bestselling author of The Puzzle Master returns with a story centered on the deadly Dragon Box, a 19th-century puzzle that has never been solved. The puzzle is filled with deadly traps and holds an imperial secret. Mike Brink is once again on the job. Prepub Alert.

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September 1, 2024
In this sequel to the magnificent The Puzzle Master (2023), Trussoni drastically increases the stakes for her protagonist, the world-famous puzzle constructor, Mike Brink. Mike's decision to try to solve one of the toughest puzzles in the world is the jumping-off point for a breathlessly paced and nail-bitingly suspenseful race between Mike and some very clever and highly dangerous adversaries. Readers who left The Puzzle Master with questions about Brink's astonishing puzzle-solving abilities will have some of them answered here, as the author goes into quite a bit of detail about the injury to Mike's brain and its unusual, sometimes frightening consequences; this is as much a story about Mike's road to making peace with his unique condition as it is about him trying to solve a fiendishly clever puzzle. The book can be read as a stand-alone, which means new readers can jump right in, although it's highly likely they'll then want to circle back and read the earlier book. A first-rate thriller. More, please!

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September 1, 2024
Puzzle genius Mike Brink, invited to Tokyo to open a booby-trapped puzzle box containing imperial secrets, risks becoming its latest victim. No run-of-the-mill puzzle expert, Brink can suss out seemingly impossible solutions with the savant syndrome and synesthesia he acquired as the result of a freakish head injury during high school. But his "nuclear brainpower" intensifies his need "to put [himself] in psychic danger to feel alive." In Japan, he feels as alive as he ever will, knowing that all six puzzle masters who attempted to open the deviously designed Dragon Box died trying. Constructed in 1868, "a time of unimaginable upheaval in Japan," it is equipped with such charming features as a guillotine to cut off a misplaced finger and a lethal aerosol spray containing arsenic. But Brink's tense adventure, which culminates in a cave on the island of Kyushu, "where the sun disappeared," only begins with his efforts to open the box. He is pursued by dark forces who are so desperate to keep him from its secrets--which are said to hold a key to the future of humanity--that they had his doctor-mentor in America murdered. At the center of the drama are two estranged sisters, one Brink's ally and the other part of the opposing faction. In different ways, both women, descendants of a samurai family, are beholden to Jameson Sedge, a tech billionaire who set up Brink's ex-girlfriend for murder in Trussoni's previous novel, The Puzzle Master (2023). Though he died by suicide, his downloaded consciousness is "digitally alive." The sequel takes a while to get going, but once its hero starts applying his special gifts, learning things he has kept secret from himself, the pages turn and the suspense kicks in. A smart, captivating novel about unraveling secrets.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from August 19, 2024
Puzzle savant Mike Brink attempts to unearth a 19th-century Japanese secret in Trussoni’s astonishing sequel to The Puzzle Master. In 1868, Emperor Meiji hired a blind mechanical master, Ogawa Ryuichi, to build a lethal contraption accessible only once every 12 years—on the full moon in the Year of the Dragon—to house crucial imperial secrets. In the decades since, Meiji’s descendants have hosted regular competitions to open the Dragon Box, but no one has ever survived the attempt. In the present, the imperial family has hired Brink to come to Tokyo for the job. Meanwhile, a long-hidden group of female samurai newly aligned with Brink’s nemesis, Jameson Sedge, becomes interested in claiming what’s inside the box. The narrative’s solitary puzzle-solving and tense espionage are equally thrilling, while Trussoni’s depiction of Brink as both a puzzle-solving genius and someone learning to trust his own abilities lends the plot surprising emotional depth. Best of all, the puzzle-solving sends Brink on an immersive sprint through contemporary and historical Japan, with plenty of shrewdly delivered trivia and thematically rewarding solutions along the way. This clever and satisfying novel cements Mike Brink as an action hero for the ages. Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House.