The Oxford Murders [Mass Market Paperback]

Guillermo Martinez (Author), Sonia Soto (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 26, 2006

Two mathematicians must join forces to stop a serial killer in this spellbinding international bestseller

A paperback sensation in Argentina, Spain, and the United Kingdom, The Oxford Murders has been hailed as "a remarkable feat" (Time Out London) and its author as "one of Argentina's most distinctive voices" (The Times Literary Supplement). It begins on a summer day in Oxford, when a young Argentine graduate student finds his landlady-an elderly woman who helped crack the Enigma Code during World War II -murdered in cold blood. Meanwhile, a renowned Oxford logician receives an anonymous note bearing a circle and the words "the first of a series." As the murders begin to pile up and more symbols are revealed, it is up to this unlikely pair to decipher the pattern before the killer strikes again.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Math and murder mingle in this intriguingly cerebral mystery. When an Argentine math student at Oxford discovers the smothered body of his landlady, conventional wisdom points to a family member with the most prosaic of motives. But then renowned logician Arthur Seldom, author of a book on the mathematics of serial killers, tells of a strange note left in his mailbox indicating the murder is the first of a series linked by a mysterious pattern. More bodies pile up, apparently of natural causes, but each paired with a message bearing a new arcane symbol. Arthur and his student ponder whether the deaths are innocent or the subtle, "imperceptible" homicides of a madman seeking to match wits with the great logician, and they rack their brains to decipher a pattern behind the signs before another corpse turns up. Martinez, a novelist and math Ph.D., writes with a restrained, elegant style sprinkled with brief disquisitions on Gödel's theorem, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and Wittgenstein's paradox, which demonstrates "the impossibility of establishing an unambiguous rule." None of that helps very much in solving the crimes, but it makes an intriguing context for the author's exploration of a fundamental mystery theme;how we impose meaningful patterns on the confusing evidence of reality and are in turn misled and blinded by those patterns. The result is a stylish, intellectually meaty whodunit. (Oct. 17)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

A young Argentinean mathematics specialist studying in Oxford finds lodging with an old woman who worked on the Enigma Code during World War II. The lodger returns home one afternoon to find two surprises: his hero, a mathematics don who has written an acclaimed book on logical series, is on the doorstep, and, when they enter, they find the old woman murdered in her wheelchair. The Oxford don, we learn, has received a note hinting at the murder and calling it "the first of the series." He fears that the killer may be testing him, thanks to a chapter in his book on serial murders. The notes, with coded messages, keep arriving as more murders are committed. Although the novel is eminently logical in its explanation of sequences and assigned meanings, the way that the police share details of their investigation with the young math student is completely illogical. This should be read for atmosphere and fascinating applications of logical sequences to crime-scene investigation--an extreme extension of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (September 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 014303796X
• ISBN-13: 978-0143037965
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #659,156 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Quite a lot of fun and very interesting, December 12, 2005

By 

Ronald H. Clark (WASHINGTON, DC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Oxford Murders (Hardcover)

I generally don't go in for murder mysteries--unless they are set in Oxford of course. This "who done it" is quite unique, since it is written by an Argentinian mathematician and incorporates a bit of mathematical concepts and jargon into the storyline. The story is every bit as challenging as any mystery with which I am familiar. For those conversant with Oxford, you will encounter many familiar locales, and the author has done his homework in scoping out the city and surrounding environs. The fact that the central character is an Argentinian graduate student in mathematics confronted not only with serial murders but with a strange country and its unique culture as well only adds richness to the narrative. The book reads smoothly and quickly (it is 196 moderate-sized pages), and the American edition is beautifully done. A most pleasant excursion into math and murder.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mathematical Mystery for the non-Mathematician, November 6, 2005

By 

HenderHouse (Libertyville, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Oxford Murders (Hardcover)

Martinez's THE OXFORD MURDERS brings the reader into two rarefied worlds -- high-level mathematical theory and Oxford University. Don't be intimidated by the mathematical subtext; Martinez makes it quite understandable (said the reviewer who never went beyond geometry). Morever, he's dealing with some of the "sexier" aspects of math: codes, logic, and great mysteries like Fermat's Last Theorem. The mystery itself is creative, although somewhat blandly presented. The characters are interesting enough to make up for the standard narrative format. I would definitely read another Martinez mystery, especially if the setting is Oxford and the focus is math (or "maths," as they say in the UK)

I must admit: I never did figure out the meaning and/or next character in the code shown on the cover and mentioned in the book. Did anyone out there figure it out?

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mathematics and Murder, October 15, 2005

By 

Debbie Lee Wesselmann (the Lehigh Valley, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Oxford Murders (Hardcover)

This quiet murder mystery set in Oxford, England around the time that Andrew Wiles revealed his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem mixes mathematics and smoke-and-mirrors "magic." A young Argentine math student arrives in Oxford and takes a room in the basement of an elderly woman's house. Before long, he and a famous mathematics don, Arthur Seldom, discover her lifeless body sprawled on the sofa. A small mistake by the murderer -- too much force when suffocating her -- shifts the death from perhaps natural to definite homicide. When the don reveals that he received a mysterious note in his cubby that led him to the house and that suggests this is only the first of many murders, the detective work begins, with the narrator and Seldom hashing out ideas about symbols, patterns, Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, the Pythagorean Society, Wittgenstein, and, of course, the solution of the "impossible," Fermat's Last Theorem. The introduction of a magician and his one-handed tricks connects the discussions of math with the truth.

While the ending is somewhat of a let-down, the book itself is entertaining, with its gentle insertion of the philosophy inherent in mathematics. Martinez's characters are not as developed as they could be, thus making it difficult to care about what happens to them, but his flowing style keeps everything moving. Those familiar with Oxford will delight in the setting, which Martinez evokes with frequent visits to the Eagle and Child (a nod to famous Oxford literary figures and minds), the various colleges, the Sheldonian Theatre, and other landmarks.