Name: The Oxford Murders
Rating: 3.2 (5 reviews)
ISBN: 9780143037965

Guillermo Martínez

A sequence of mathematical symbols holds the key to a series of murders that Oxford mathematician Arthur Seldom and his assistant, a young Argentine mathematics student, must put together to find the killer before he can strike again. Reprint. 100,000 first printing.

The Oxford Murders

Fraser Simons

Having watched the movie a few weeks ago, I was curious about the book. The movie is substantially, sometimes comically hollywoodized, which I had expected, given it’s sort of Robert Langdon-esk style. 

The book turns out to be, as with the movie, just alright, for me. I find the author lingers on stuff I don’t care about and substantially abstracts aspects of crime thrillers that I go to them for. But I do find the maths concept pretty interesting, and it is better in the book. Less dumbed down for the audience and just much better articulated. 

It’s also got a memoir type feel, probably trying to evoke some Watson-Holmes, where he is looking back on his life. This deflated the stakes and, along with the abstraction, makes it very hard to care about the characters. It’s a decent story, though.

Liz Dollmeyer

** spoiler alert **
           WOW. i sort of expected the first explanation, but the second one blew me out of the water. NEVER saw that coming.

Using rules and axioms there will always be some propositions that can't be proved either true or false. But can this apply to muder?

Sarah Escorsa

This was an ok read but I don't think I'd pick up another Guillermo Martinez in the future. The plot was interesting enough but the characters were quite flat. One word of advice for those who haven't seen the film adaptation: don't watch it, it's one of the worst book adaptation I've watched!

The Oxford Murders

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