The Oxford Murders – Guillermo Martinez

Urgh. Really, just urgh! I don’t know whether I should review this thing or just throw it against the wall. I will review it because:

a)    I like my wall, and

b)    I respect books, even crappy books like this one.

First of all: how dare he! How dare he use the beautiful discipline of Mathematical Logic to do…that! The rage! I am a mathematician (as well as other things but let’s not go there) by training and I felt such anger at how he used mathematical elegance to write something like that. It’s beyond me.

But let’s take this all from the beginning, a series of murders occurs in Oxford, the murderer leaves “mathematical riddles” to a young Argentinean mathematician and one of the professors. They work with the police to catch the murderer. That’s the plot. Nice and interesting, huh? WRONG! The idea is there, but it is the laziest piece of crime fiction or mathematical pop fiction I’ve ever had the misfortune to put myself through.

The scientific conversations are at best pathetic. Show me one mathematician who knows his/her Logic theory and yet goes around talking about “Godel’s theorem”. It’s theoremS! As in multiple theorems! Because it’s two of them, not one but two, you genius! And if you feel I’m getting too technical here, if you’re going to make up a city why bother saying: “and this whole thing I’ve made up is Oxford”! I’ve been to Oxford, I don’t recognise any of the things he goes on about. Because they’re made up! So the maths is shaky, the city is made up, now how about the murders? I hear you ask. Well, dear reader, how would you feel if you read a murder mystery, you’ve worked out the murderer by page 50, by page 100 you’ve also worked out the scapegoats, and you were done with the mathematical series when the second clue was up? Cheated, I hear you say! And that’s exactly how I feel. Cheated!

Trying to be a little bit understanding here: let’s say that I caught on the mathematical clues because of my background and they were not too obvious. The rest of the plot was thinner than food wrap. The characters were either completely one-dimensional or chauvinistic pigs! Wonderful.

Cheated. I feel cheated.

Enjoyed it: It hurt me. It hurt me all over. 

Read again: No.

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