FRIDAY: Killer Sudoku and Ghost Sudoku

 In Killer Sudoku, Liza is at a sudoku tournament with old friends (including two of her three suitors) and new. But one by one, the top contenders start dying. Can Liza find a killer before she is the next champ targeted?

In Ghost Sudoku, Liza returns home after a two week secret vacation (to recover from her last adventure) and finds out she is somehow running for mayor. By the time Liza gets out of the race, she knows way more about the local political machine than she ever cared to... and someone is dead.

I enjoyed both mysteries. In Ghost, I figured out the who and the how fairly early, but there were still plenty of clues about why for me to discover. The puzzles are great, too. I got both books from the library, so I had to transfer the puzzles to paper in order to work them, and they range in difficulty from fairly simple to ones that stretch out over several days. Answers are included. My review of other books in the series can be found here.

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FRIDAY: The Sudoku Murder

Kate McDonald returns home to New Hampshire at the request of her mentor, PT Avondale to help him with problems at his Puzzle Museum. When PT is killed, Katie tops the suspect list. She figures she better find the killer if she wants to save herself and her beloved museum.

It took me awhile to warm up to this story and the characters. Katie has a lot of baggage - memories of being teased by bullies for being so smart as well as family issues. I had to hang with the story for a few chapters to start to like her enough to care about her story. PT was withdrawn and frail, and there are plenty of bitter, nasty people making Katie's life difficult that added to the time it took for me to start liking the book.

But the story of how PT reached out to Katie as a little girl who tragically lost her mother and later to a young man in an abusive home sucked me in and I enjoyed the rest of the story. I would love to find a really Puzzle Museum to visit - it sounds like a lot of fun! Knowing how to do sudoku is not a requirement for enjoying the book. (first in a series)