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THE MISSING PIECE
Antoine Bello
translated by Helen Stevenson
Serpents Tail paperback original £9.99 |
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Reviewed by Russell James |
Think you've been here before - a serial
killer commits a series of bizarre mutilations and murders as he
works his way through a closed group of victims? Well, you haven't.
Here's one of the cleverest and oddest puzzle mysteries you'll ever
read. Set in the almost imaginary world of 'speed puzzle
competitions' and jigsaw puzzle obsessives, THE MISSING PIECE is set
out as a puzzle. The picture on the box is represented in the book
by an expository preface illustrating the entire plot - well, not
quite: "reality is a little more complex" says the author
with characteristic understatement. Jigsaw pieces are represented by
48 variously shaped segments - minutes of meetings, newspaper
articles, letters, e-mails - presented in random date sequence,
rather as puzzle pieces might fall out onto the table. Indeed, I
suspect that this book could have been published in 48 pamphlets -
plus the summary and solution (supplied) - leaving you the reader to
pick them up in any order you choose as you attempt to work out the
solution.
Your task is straightforward - to identify the killer. All the
clues are given but they are concealed in so much misleading and
teasing material that you'll be a puzzle master if you solve it. Not
that this matters: the puzzle is deliberately arcane, like the mass
of drily comical data you are given about the world of jigsaws and
speed puzzling. The story's characters are obsessed with the finest
details of long vanished puzzles, they embark on ridiculous puzzle
projects and conduct life-long collector feuds - they are in bitter
rivalry. The world's champion speed puzzlers are a deliciously weird
bunch - and they are the targets of the killer. This is a mad but
perfectly readable book with its own crazy logic, and it is
impeccably translated. A must for obsessives and puzzlers.
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