The Puzzle Master

The Puzzle Master is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.Copyright © 2023 by Danielle TrussoniAll rights reserved.Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.RANDOM HOUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATANames: Trussoni, Danielle, author.Title: The puzzle master : a novel / Danielle Trussoni.Description: First edition. | New York : Random House, [2023]Identifiers: LCCN 2022033803 (print) | LCCN 2022033804 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593595299 (hardcover ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780593595305 (ebook)Subjects: LCGFT: Detective and mystery fiction. | Thrillers (Fiction) | Novels.Classification: LCC PS3620.R93 P89 2023 (print) | LCC PS3620.R93 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20220715LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022033803LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022033804Ebook ISBN 9780593595305randomhousebooks.comBook design by Caroline Cunningham, adapted for ebookTitle and part title background image: Adobe Stock/berCheckCover design: Carlos BeltránCover image: Patthana Nirangkul/Getty Imagesep_prh_6.1_143797785_c0_r0 ContentsCoverTitle PageCopyrightEpigraphAuthor’s NotePuzzle OneChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12Chapter 13Chapter 14Chapter 15Chapter 16Chapter 17Chapter 18Chapter 19Chapter 20Chapter 21Chapter 22Chapter 23Chapter 24Chapter 25Chapter 26Chapter 27Chapter 28Chapter 29Chapter 30Chapter 31Chapter 32Chapter 33Chapter 34Chapter 35Chapter 36Chapter 37Chapter 38Chapter 39Chapter 40Chapter 41Chapter 42Chapter 43Chapter 44Chapter 45Chapter 46Chapter 47Chapter 48Chapter 49Chapter 50Chapter 51Chapter 52Chapter 53Chapter 54Chapter 55Chapter 56Chapter 57Chapter 58Chapter 59Chapter 60Chapter 61Chapter 62Chapter 63Chapter 64Chapter 65Chapter 66Chapter 67Note to the ReaderDedicationAcknowledgmentsBy Danielle TrussoniAbout the Author_143797785_ “The Supreme Being is one who has created and solved all possible games.”—GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ Acquired savant syndrome is a rare, but real, medical condition in which a normal person acquires extraordinary cognitive abilities after a traumatic brain injury. There are fewer than fifty documented cases of acquired savant syndrome in the world. By the time you read this, I will have caused much sorrow, and for that I beg your forgiveness. As you know, my child, I am a haunted man, and while the toll has been steep, I have at last made peace with my demons. I do not write this as an excuse for what I have done. I know too well that there is no forgiveness for it—not in the eyes of God or man. But rather, I write this account of my discovery out of necessity. It is my last chance to record the incredible events, the terrible and wonderful events, that changed my life and will, if you venture into the mysteries I am about to relate, change yours, as well.What, you ask, is responsible for such torment? I will tell you, but take heed: Once you know the truth, it is not easily forgotten. It has haunted me every minute of every day. There was no question of ignoring it. I was drawn to its mystery like a moth circling a flame—In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni. And while I am fortunate to have survived to record the truth, even now, as I stand on the edge of the abyss, I cannot help but shrink at the thought of entrusting such a dangerous secret to you.I have suffered, but it is the suffering of a man who has created his own torture chamber. I believed I could know what shouldn’t be known. I wanted to see things, secret things, and so I lifted the veil between the human and the Divine and stared directly into the eyes of God. That is the nature of the puzzle: to offer pain and pleasure by turns. And while the truth I am about to reveal may shock you, if it offers some small refuge of hope, then this, my last communication, will achieve all it must. Mike Brink turned down a country road, drove through a dense evergreen forest, and stopped before the high metal gate of the prison. His dog, a one-year-old dachshund called Conundrum—Connie for short—slept on the floor of the truck, camouflaged by shadows. She was so still that when the security guard stepped to Brink’s truck and peered inside, he didn’t see her at all. He merely checked Brink’s driver’s license against a list and waved him toward an imposing brick institution that seemed better suited to a horror movie than the bright June sunshine.Mike Brink had an appointment with Dr. Thessaly Moses, the head psychologist at the New York State Correctional Facility, an all-women’s minimum-security prison in the hamlet of Ray Brook, New York. She’d called him the week before and asked him to come to the prison to speak with her. One of the prisoners had drawn a perplexing puzzle, and she wanted help making sense of it. Because of his work as a puzzle constructor and his fame after Time magazine christened him the most talented puzzleist in the world, thirty-two-year-old Mike Brink was barraged with puzzles. Most of them he solved in an instant. But from Dr. Moses’s description, this puzzle sounded peculiar, unlike any puzzle he’d seen before. When he asked her to take a photo and email it, she said she couldn’t risk it. Prisoner records were confidential. “I shouldn’t be discussing this with you at all,” she said. “But this is a unique patient, one who’s become rather important to me.” And so, despite his deadlines and the three-hundred-mile drive, Mike Brink agreed to come upstate to see it. Puzzles were his passion, his way of making sense of the world, and this was one he couldn’t resist.The prison was ominous, with steeples and dark, narrow windows. When he’d read up on its history, he found that it was built in 1903 as a sanatorium for the treatment of tuberculosis. The clean air, high altitude, and endless forests had been an integral part of the cure. The institution’s one claim to fame was its appearance in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. Plath had visited her boyfriend while he was recovering from tuberculosis at the facility and then repurposed the sanatorium in her fiction.