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Liza Kelly has retreated to a small town in Oregon to make tough decisions about her job as a Hollywood publicist and her marriage to a cheating spouse. She is tempted back to Los Angles by a Sudoku tournament. As she is the Sudoku guru of the Oregon Daily paper, this tournament is worth the risk of traveling out of her safe retreat. She is picked up at the airport by former star and friend Derrick Robbins. Derrick is a huge Sudoku fan and is planning on winning the tournament. In fact he likes Sudoku so much, he gets both of Oregon’s leading papers in order to solve the problems they include daily. As well as enjoying the chance to test his skills, Derrick wants Liza to sign his niece as she has the potential of being a star. While in negotiations, Liza discovers Derrick’s murdered body. Luckily she is able to provide an alibi and goes home to Oregon. This does not stop her from investigating. Liza is suspicious of the death as shortly before his murder, Derrick told her a wild conspiracy theory involving messages hidden within Sudoku puzzles. These messages involve the planning and execution of crimes. Liza fears that Derrick was killed for revealing the conspiracy. With the help of a childhood sweetheart and her current husband, Liza must solve the puzzles and find the clues necessary to stop a killer. DEATH BY SUDOKU will seem very weak to a reader who does not follow Sudoku. This book provides tips about the book as well as detailed explanations of how the messages where hidden in the puzzles. While this theme and information is important in order to understand how Liza solves the murders, it is also boring and mathematical to those who do not solve the puzzles. To a true Sudoku lover, this book might prove disappointing as the information included should seem self-evident to one familiar with the puzzles already. In addition to being dominated by Sudoku tips, this book lacks strongly-developed characters. None of the characters stand out from the pack. They are all one-dimensional stereotypes, who lack depth, emotion and intellect. The characters in DEATH BY SUDOKU are also interchangeable; which makes many of the secondary characters forgettable. In fact, I spent a lot of time trying to remember who was who and why his or her actions were important. The lack of interesting and developed characters made this book incredibly difficult to get through. Since all of the characters were dull, it was almost impossible to care what happened to them or to the plot. All new writers have my sympathy and I encourage their efforts in principle. New writers have the potential to improve the genre and add new ideas, which helps keep the mystery genre fresh. Also breaking into the field can be difficult and many very talented writers have spent years getting their book published. So while I wanted to support the entry of DEATH BY SUDOKU I cannot. DEATH BY SUDOKU does nothing to improve the genre as the characters lack personality, the plotting is weak and the storyline itself needs to be stronger. If the author would attempt to improve her writing ability rather than try to catch the Sudoku bandwagon, she might produce a book worth reading.
Reviewed by Sarah Dudley, July 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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