Killer Sudoku

Book excerpt: Maiden’s Bay is a small, scenic town on the Oregon Coast where citizens get their number fix thanks to Liza Kelly—Sudoku Maven with the Oregon Daily. Her challenging puzzles sharpen the mind, and her deductive skills unravel even the most enigmatic clues. Liza is looking forward to a refreshing change of pace as a competitor in the West Coast Sudoku Summit. It’s a chance to break away from her job and her almost-boyfriends back home. That is, until her paramours show up and an obnoxious TV crew decides to cover the Sudoku A-listers. Now Liza knows how the numbers feel—boxed in. During the first round, one of Liza’s toughest opponents makes a spectacle in front of the cameras—by dropping dead. And soon, contestants are being eliminated one by one, and not in the way Liza planned. There’s more at stake here than prize money, and if Liza doesn’t find out what’s up with the murderer’s pattern, she’ll the next one down.