Kirkus
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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 © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.