Product Description

On a balmy summer's day in Oxford an old lady who once helped decipher the Enigma Code is killed. After receiving a cryptic anonymous note containing only the address and the symbol of a circle, Arthur Seldom, a leading mathematician, arrives to find the body. Then follow more murders - an elderly man on a life-support machine is found dead with needle marks in this throat; the percussionist of an orchestra at a concert at Blenheim Palace dies before the audience's very eyes - seemingly unconnected except for notes appearing in the maths department, for the attention of Seldom. Why is he being targeted as the recipient of these coded messages? All he can conjecture is that it might relate to his latest book, an unexpected bestseller about serial killers and the parallels between investigations into their crimes and certain mathematical theorems. It is left to Seldom and a postgraduate mathematics student to work out the key to the series of symbols before the killer strikes again.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43632 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Review
'An enthralling conflict between the heart and the mind'. OBSERVER 'Unusual blend of murder most foul and mathematics most pure ... a playful intellectual exercise' DAILY MAIL 'An intellectual thriller that can be much enjoyed even by those whose grasp of mathematics is limited' THE TIMES

London Review of Books, 20 January 2005
'The plot rattles along ... pausing occasionally to fill the reader in with a bit of necessary theoretical background'.

Sainsbury's Magazine, February 2005
'This award-winning Spanish bestseller is a spare, intelligent thriller ... a classic crime novel with universal appeal'.

Customer Reviews

Disappointing
The author may know a lot about maths but he doesn't seem to know a lot about people. These are some of the flatest characters I have ever encountered...uttering some of the dullest dialogue know to man- (and indeed woman-) kind. The use of Oxford as a location seems based on an afternoon spent on Google...if it wasn't for the constant, and rather irritating, name dropping it could have been anywhere.

Also could someone please tell overseas writers that English policemen do NOT carry concealed weapons...

Downhill after a promising start
At first this novel promised to be a testing and original mystery but sadly by the mid point it was on a downhill path. Even with poor mathematical abilities the culprit and motive were obvious all along. I waited for a surprise twist that never came. One thing in its favour is that it has inspired me to take a look at the theories mentioned. Perhaps there is more to mathematics than tedious school maths classes suggested.

Enjoyable read
Shortly after an Argentinean student arrives in Oxford to study mathematics / logic, he comes home one day to find his landlady has been murdered. The inclusion of mathematics and the associated logical thought processes behind it, presents the basis of an interesting detective novel. OK, there is the odd minor mistake here and there but it is an interesting series of murders to solve. I didn’t think the solution to the murders was obvious at all. Half way through the book and I couldn’t put it down, I had to finish it.

My only real problem was that it was short and I think that the characters could have been expanded both in background and personality, which would have added to my enjoyment of the solution.