“The Puzzle Box” by Danielle Trussoni
c.2024 / Random House / $30 / 325 pages
Three Down is a four-letter word for “reading device.”
That’s an easy one and it fits but Sixteen Across is keeping you from finishing this puzzle. You’ve filled it in and erased it three times now and it still doesn’t make sense but that’s OK. This is why you play these brain games. As in the new book, “The Puzzle Box” by Danielle Trussoni, mindbogglers like this should be fun, not dangerous.
Ever since the head injury he sustained in high school, Mike Brink is a man consumed.
Not only does he suffer from synesthesia, with swirling colors on the periphery of his vision, but he is obsessed with puzzles and patterns. Where other people see things, Mike sees designs everywhere in contrast and cubes. He can’t help it.
Known around the world for his puzzle-solving prowess, Mike wishes he could be “normal.”
But “normal” people don’t get invitations to open Japan’s mythical Dragon Box.
Until the moment he solved the puzzle that was the invitation, Mike hadn’t even been sure the Dragon Box existed. Supposedly, an attempt to open it was only allowed every 12 years and, since it’s devious but brilliant creation by a blind man, everyone who tried died horribly. And now here was a beautiful Japanese woman, Sakura, standing in his apartment, promising Mike that she’d accompany him to Tokyo if he accepted the challenge.
How could he not?
When Ume was a child, she and her sister were taught to fight like samurai, with the same deadly fierceness that her great-great-grandfather, grandfather, and her mother had once displayed. Ume remembered her training well and she knew Sakura did, too, but Sakura was too young to remember all the dangers of it. Sakura was well educated — both girls were; once they’d arrived in America, their guardian had seen to it — but she was quite naive.
In return for his favor, the guardian wanted just one thing.
He wanted whatever was in the Dragon Box.
For years now, you’ve been waiting for a book like “The DaVinci Code.” You may find that “The Puzzle Box” is close, but close might not be enough.
There’s both good news and not-so-great news here. You’ll find adventure, exciting chase scenes, and international conspiracy inside author Danielle Trussoni’s novel, but it starts out stiff and uneven. So much is packed into the first third of the tale that it can feel rushed, but also too slow sometimes. The characters are well-done and well-rounded and Trussoni doesn’t over-reveal, leaving readers some intrigue to enjoy — but the characters’ personal quirks are on repeat, to the point that you’ll sigh heavily when you’re reminded one more time that Mike practically needs puzzles to live.
Most oddly, the end of the story is revealed long before the books’ last page.
Readers who demand a tighter, more hair-raising, scream-down-the-cliff-type thriller may want to look elsewhere for their enjoyment because “The Puzzle Box” isn’t it. Fantasy, ninja-loving, slightly tamer intrigue novel fans, on the other hand, won’t be able to put it down.
