Teaser Tuesday: Sudden Death Sudoku

Teaser Tuesday meme courtesy of MizB at Should Be Reading. Choose two sentences at random from your current read; include the title and author for those who might want to read the book.

In Sudden Death Sudoku, a mystery novel, Katie McDonald enters a sudoku challenge game and finds problems that lead up to a murder.

"Maybe Gordon was a cheater. Or maybe he was right, and there was more jealousy than truth in the accusation, which would be a shame."

(p. 32, Sudden Death Sudoku: A Katie McDonald Mystery, 2008)

Currently Reading and Gardening

Whiskey and Water by Nina Wright, a mystery featuring a real estate agent Whiskey Mattimoe and her Afghan hound Abra, set on the shores of Lake Michigan.

Next on the list, The Sudoku Puzzle Murders by Parnell Hall, a Puzzle Lady Mystery with crossword and sudoku puzzles sprinkled throughout the book for the reader to figure out. Solutions also included.

I mean to also read The Moon in the Mango Tree by Pamela Binnings Ewen about a young singer in the 1920s whose husband is a medical missionary who becomes physician to the royal court of Siam. She travels around the world to find her place as a singer. The part about Siam intrigues me, especially the Siam of the early 1900s.

I have also borrowed from the library, The Eye of Jade by Diane Wei Liang, a new detective series set in China, written by a Beijing-born woman who took part in the Student Democracy Movement in the 1980s in China, has a Ph.D in business administration from the U.S., and left teaching after 10 years to write for a living from London, where she now lives. More Chinese mystery novels!

In the meantime, I also have to tend to the garden, where spring flowers have finished blooming and summer ones have not yet come up. The spirea bush needs trimming, and the mushroom mulch needs to be tucked around roots so that the roses and clematis start producing flowers again! Trying to use only organic type of fertilizers but will have to spray the rose bushes as they have some sort of brown spotting on the leaves.

Can't wait till winter-spring to use what I learned in a three-hour tree pruning workshop I attended two weeks ago. (How much can you learn in 3 hours?) The Rose of Sharon and the red acer palmatum (Japanese maple) in the back as well as the green one in the front both need some shaping and controlling. Alas, I don't have the skill of Japanese gardeners, but will have to experiment.

Sudoku Mystery Novels, Anyone?

Shelley Freydont's hardcover, The Sudoku Murder is a novel for the general mystery buff.

Kaye Morgan's paperback, Death by Sudoku is a book for the mystery buff who is also a serious sudoku puzzle player. Morgan has also written another on the same theme, Murder by Numbers.

Take your pick.

Katie McDonald, in The Sudoku Murder, is a Ph.D math whiz who works for a hush-hush government think tank. She has a photographic memory, grew up learning to solve many different types of puzzles, and is loyal to her childhood mentor and friend, Prof. P.T. Avondale. She takes a long vacation and returns home to New Hampshire when the professor calls for her help to save his beloved puzzle museum from a bank foreclosure.

Certain parties, including the owner of the bank, would like to see the museum building razed and a more profitable shopping mall in its place. Soon after returning home, however, Katie finds herself solving a different kind of puzzle, the mystery of the professor's murder. The book is entertaining and doesn't require the reader to solve puzzles of any kind or even to think very hard.

Liza Kelly in Death by Sudoku, is a math whiz of a different sort - a former Hollywood publicist who is secretly a sudoku addict, and also part Asian. (Japanese, maybe?)

This protagonis also returns to her hometown, but to live a simpler life and write puzzles for a local newspaper, the Oregon Daily. Liza soon discovers that secret messages are being sent nationwide to followers of a group out to create mayhem and murder, and the messages are being sent via the Sudoku puzzles printed in a Seattle newspaper.

The plot and the solution are as elaborate as a very difficult Soduku puzzle and only the most serious of Sudoku fans can, or want to, follow it. Learn about Naked Pairs, Hidden Pairs, Swordfish, X-Wings, Nishio, and other chains of logic to help you solve the most daunting of puzzles. And at the very end of the book, as an added bonus, are.....Sudo-Cues!!

Sudo-Cues: Ten Things Not To Do At A Sudoku Tournament! Don't, for example, expect it to be easy, don't forget your brain, or your allergy pills, and don't forget you're in public! (Sudoku is, of course, normally a solitary kind of activity).

Kaye Morgan's next Sudoku mystery novel is scheduled for 2008. I only hope it'll be easier for the general mystery reader cum puzzle player to get through. Yes, I do plan to read it, even though I might have to face Sword fish, X-Wings, Nishio, or other unfathomable chains of logic.

Sudoku Mysteries

Seen at Barnes and Noble: the first in a new Sudoku Mystery Series by Kaye Morgan. Do we have inventive and savvy writers or what?

Here are several mysteries with the sudoku theme, by different authors. I haven't read any of these as yet, but have them on my "To Check Out and Possibly Read" list.

Death By Sudoku: A Sudoku Mystery by Kaye Morgan, July 2007.

Murder By Numbers: A Sudoku Mystery by Kaye Morgan, January 2008.

The Sudoku Murder: A Katie McDonald Mystery by Shelley Fredont, April 2007.

The Sudoku Puzzle Murders: A Puzzle Lady Mystery by Parnell Hall, April 2008.