Sinister Sudoku — Kaye Morgan

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 conducting a sudoku class in the most unlikely of locales -- the minimum security wing of the Seacoast Correctional Facility. The students are eager for the distraction as they have far too much time on their hands. And some of them are extremely good at their lessons. Though she's sad when her best student has to quit the class, Liza is thrilled that he's about to be released from prison.

But he doesn't enjoy his freedom for long -- his dead body turns up in Liza's room when a surprise snowstorm traps her at a local inn. With the police and an insurance investigator hounding her for information, and the threat that she or someone she loves could be the next victim, Liza believes sudoku is the only solution to this murder -- especially the secrets her clever student encoded into the seventeen-clue puzzle he created just before his death...