The Missing Piece: A Novel - Softcover

Bello, Antoine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156013371 ISBN 13: 9780156013376

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin, 2009

Synopsis

Part murder mystery, part intellectual game, this witty, fresh novel follows the hunt for a serial killer mounted by an American billionaire bent on reviving the jigsaw puzzle. Original. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Authors

Born in Boston to French parents, Antoine Bello lives in Paris, where he runs an Internet company. The Missing Piece, which was first runner-up for France's prestigious Prix Novembre, is his first novel.

Born in Boston to French parents, Antoine Bello lives in Paris, where he runs an Internet company. The Missing Piece, which was first runner-up for France's prestigious Prix Novembre, is his first novel.

From the Back Cover

"A fascinating novel, wayward and witty, full of red herrings but scrupulously fair. Far more fun than a jigsaw."--Time Out (London)


When an American billionaire and media mogul decides to revive the fortunes of the jigsaw puzzle, he sets up an "International Speed Puzzle Circuit." Soon players from around the world are competing against the clock to solve puzzles, while millions watch on television or stadium screens. The game is a phenomenal success, and a puzzle craze sweeps the nation.
Simultaneously, a serial killer targets key players on the circuit. Each of the bodies is discovered missing a limb, with only a Polaroid of a corresponding limb from another body in its place. Suspecting that the killer is putting together a macabre human puzzle of his own, the authorities struggle to find the vital missing piece.
Given forty-eight "pieces"--including email, newspaper articles, meeting minutes, media interviews, and letters--the reader is encouraged to solve this bizarre and fascinating mystery. Intriguing, ingenious, and gripping throughout, The Missing Piece is part detective novel, part puzzle, and entirely entertaining.


"A fiendishly enjoyable novel . . . Guaranteed to provide hours of entertainment."--Matt Thorne

"Marvelously imaginative and original."--The Times Literary Supplement (London)

"Within the space of a few pages the reader is plunged into a world which is totally unreal yet completely believable at the same time."--La Nouvelle Republique (France)


Born in Boston to French parents, Antoine Bello lives in New York. The Missing Piece, which was first runner up for France's prestigious Prix Novembre in 1998, is his first novel.

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"A fascinating novel, wayward and witty, full of red herrings but scrupulously fair. Far more fun than a jigsaw."--Time Out (London)


When an American billionaire and media mogul decides to revive the fortunes of the jigsaw puzzle, he sets up an "International Speed Puzzle Circuit." Soon players from around the world are competing against the clock to solve puzzles, while millions watch on television or stadium screens. The game is a phenomenal success, and a puzzle craze sweeps the nation.
Simultaneously, a serial killer targets key players on the circuit. Each of the bodies is discovered missing a limb, with only a Polaroid of a corresponding limb from another body in its place. Suspecting that the killer is putting together a macabre human puzzle of his own, the authorities struggle to find the vital missing piece.
Given forty-eight "pieces"--including email, newspaper articles, meeting minutes, media interviews, and letters--the reader is encouraged to solve this bizarre and fascinating mystery. Intriguing, ingenious, and gripping throughout,The Missing Piece is part detective novel, part puzzle, and entirely entertaining.


"A fiendishly enjoyable novel . . . Guaranteed to provide hours of entertainment."--Matt Thorne

"Marvelously imaginative and original."--The Times Literary Supplement (London)

"Within the space of a few pages the reader is plunged into a world which is totally unreal yet completely believable at the same time."--La Nouvelle Republique (France)


Born in Boston to French parents, Antoine Bello lives in New York. The Missing Piece, which was first runner up for France's prestigious Prix Novembre in 1998, is his first novel.

Reviews

Debut novelist Bello's intricate murder mystery satirically imagines an alternate 1990s world in which spectators tired of chess and Scrabble tournaments have made jigsaw puzzle competitions the latest craze of the nerdy set. The puzzle contests, requiring a great amount of dexterity, have swept through Europe, and now developer and millionaire Charles Wallerstein, president of the American Puzzle Federation, hopes to bring the "professional puzzle circuit" to the States. As if the puzzle craze wasn't perplexing enough, a deranged madman is systematically drugging and dismembering the high-ranking competitors in these contests. But who and why? Does it have something to do with Wallerstein's rival Upton Sutter and his ultra-conservative Puzzology Society? The society has turned up its nose at the jigsaw puzzle craze in favor of comically arcane experiments like the Gleaners Project, in which one man builds a brick wall while another follows behind him and disassembles it, as Puzzology members study their work patterns and the fluctuating configurations of the half-built wall. The novel's 48 chapters consist of newspaper articles about the slayings, magazine interviews with key puzzle-world figures, minutes from meetings of puzzle societies, and other documents relevant to the case, and the reader is invited to piece together these clues. Bello's conceit is clever and amusing, though the intrigue loses steam before the end of the novel. Some readers will find the story's hermetic world exhausting and claustrophobic, but those who love brainteasers will cheer.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Originally published in France in 1998, this satirical serial-murder puzzle was first runner-up for the prestigious Prix Novembre. Bello works on several levels here. First, he concocts an elaborate international jigsaw puzzle craze, the International Speed Puzzle Circuit. Second, he devises an accompanying murder mystery in which a serial killer seeks out key players on the circuit, kills them, and then amputates individual body parts, forming his own macabre jigsaw puzzle. Third, the book itself is a puzzle, in "forty-eight pieces," or small chapters. Bello keeps the reader at arm's length; there is no direct authorial voice here, only a collection of newspaper articles, interviews, radio reports, play-by-plays of puzzle matches, letters, and minutes of meetings of the International Puzzle Society. The reader puzzles out the mystery from these fragments, until the killer himself takes over the puzzle and the narration. Some readers may find Bello's narrative technique overly intellectual; others will warm to the intricate challenge. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0156013371
• ISBN 13: 9780156013376
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 248