Danielle Trussoni Explores Japanese History and Synesthesia in Thriller 'The Puzzle Box'

In The Puzzle Box, New York Times bestselling author, Danielle Trussoni, writes an intriguing follow-up to her 2023 hit thriller, The Puzzle Master. Set in Japan during the Year of the Wood Dragon, her novel tells the story of a puzzle savant named Mike who has been invited to Tokyo to help crack the ancient Dragon Box, a highly complex and intricate puzzle box that has remained unsolved for over a century and has killed every puzzle master who has ventured to open it before him. Just as with the first book, The Puzzle Master, both stories feature the same protagonist, Mike Brink. Trussoni explained, “…[Mike] is an ingenious puzzle solver… when he was 17, he was a football star, but was hit really hard on the field and has a traumatic brain injury that left him with a gift. He’s very good at math, he has a photographic memory, and he can solve puzzles better than anyone else in the world. So, he appears in The Puzzle Master, which was published last year, and he also now appears in The Puzzle Box, which was just released.” Despite the connection, readers can enjoy both books in the order they prefer. Trussoni said, “It’s not necessary to read one before the other. They have totally separate stories and you can pick up the second book, for example, and read that first.”

As for the setting of this novel, what inspired Trussoni to choose Japan as its location? For her, her love of this country and its culture stemmed from her time living there for two years after college. “I was hired to teach English in high school in southern Japan, and I loved it! It was just one of these amazing, life-changing experiences for me… when I was there, I’ve always wanted to write about Japan after that experience and had just, sort of, carried around all of this knowledge about that country with me over the years… sort of just waiting, like, when am I going to find a book that I can write, you know, bring Japan in somehow, and after creating this character, this puzzle savant character in The Puzzle Master, I realized that he could be a really great way to get me to Japan and to write a book about Japan.”