The Puzzle Master A Novel

"All the world is a puzzle, and Mike Brink-a celebrated and ingenious puzzle constructor-understands its patterns like no one else. Once a promising Midwestern football star, Brink was transformed by a traumatic brain injury that caused a rare medical condition: Acquired Savant Syndrome. The injury left him with a mental superpower-he can solve puzzles, calculate equations, and see patterns in ways ordinary people can't. But his condition has also left him deeply isolated, unable to fully connect with other people. All of this changes when Brink meets Jess Price, a woman serving thirty years in prison for murder. Traumatized by the crime, Price has not spoken a word since her arrest five years before. And when she draws a perplexing puzzle, her psychiatrist believes it will explain the crime she committed, and calls Brink to solve it. What begins as a desire to crack a strange and alluring cipher quickly morphs into an obsession with the woman who drew the puzzle. When Price reveals that there is something more urgent, and more dangerous, behind her silence, Brink is thrust into a hunt for the truth. The quest takes Brink through a series of interlocking enigmas, but the heart of the mystery is The God Puzzle, an enigmatic prayer circle created by the thirteenth-century Jewish mystic Abraham Abulafia, one of the most controversial men in the history of Kabbalah. As Brink navigates a maze of clues, and his emotional entanglement with Price becomes more intense, he realizes that he is in danger. Because the shocking revelation of the puzzle's true meaning will redefine the nature of life, death, and human identity"--