The Oxford Murders [Hardcover]

Guillermo Martinez (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing (1980)
• ASIN: B000N77Y68
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)

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.