Book Talk: Daniel Miller’s ‘The Tree of Knowledge’

Last week” (Jan. 29, 2025), I wrote about Daniel G. Miller’s “The Orphanage by the Lake.” I liked the introduction of a female Korean American private eye, and I thought that the story was interesting. So, I checked out other books by the author. I found that his debut novel was “The Tree of Knowledge” (2022, 276 pages in softcover format). So, I ordered it online and received it the next day.

I had been working on a Cryptogram puzzle when the package arrived. A cryptogram is a letter substitution code. I also do Codewords, which is another type of code that uses a crossword format without clues and substitutes numbers for alphabetic letters. I don’t know why I like these types of puzzles; maybe I find them to be a bit more challenging than crosswords.

Anyway, when I began reading Miller’s novel, I was amused that it was about code-breaking. However, as I read on, it was apparent that the cipher was a “logic” code, and the method of breaking it involved something that closely resembles a flowchart, but it is plotted horizontally instead of vertically. However, successfully completing the “Tree of Knowledge” gave the codebreaker unlimited power.