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Review_FICTION

Selena and her late husband, Ed, owned
the Cole Group—a company specializing [Q&A]
in kidnap prevention, ransom negotia-
tions, and rescues throughout the PW Talks with Nova Jacobs
world—until Ed’s death in a bombing.
Dominic may have been closer to mem- Math and Murder
bers of the Cole Group than anyone has
let on. Frustrated by the half-truths and
In Jacobs’s The Last Equation of Isaac Severy (Touchstone, Mar.), the
omissions of Selena and those around her,
Leah and Finn must examine all the Cole title character, a brilliant mathematician, leaves behind cryptic clues
employees and their past missions to find to his mysterious death for his granddaughter to solve.
a murderer. Readers will hope these sib-
ling cops return in a sequel. Agent: How did you come up with this idea? Do mathematicians view the world
Camilla Wray, Darley Anderson Literary The idea of a murder mystery set differently?
(U.K.). (Mar.) against a mathematical backdrop had I do think so. But then don’t we all
been accumulating in my mind for use our specific areas of expertise to
Glimpse some time. I had moved to Los filter our experiences? It just happens
Jonathan Maberry. St. Martin’s, $26.99 Angeles for the film culture, but that mathematicians—much like art-
(352p) ISBN 978-1-250-06526-1 found myself simulta- ists—experience this fil-
New Yorker Rain Thomas, the tor- neously fascinated by tering in a particularly rar-
mented heroine of this uneven supernat- the worlds of Caltech © jeremy rabb efied and abstract way. In
ural thriller from bestseller Maberry and the Jet Propulsion his book Letters to a Young
(Ghost Road Blues), had sex for the first Laboratory. Here was Mathematician, Ian Stewart
time at 15 with 18-year-old Noah, who this entire buzzing writes that to be a mathe-
shipped off to Iraq the next day. She later universe of creativity matician is to encounter
learned that she was pregnant and that and mental rigor com- mathematical beauty not
Noah has died in an explosion. Under pletely separate from only in the interior arena
pressure, Rain gave up their baby for Hollywood, yet just of numbers and symbols
adoption. Years later, she still grieves for over the hill in but also in the everyday
Noah and feels guilty about giving up the Pasadena. I loved the world, like the precise
baby. Then things start to get really bad. idea of a story set in rhythms of a dog’s gait or
She arrives early for a job interview, only L.A. in which the entertainment the geometry of birds assembled on a
to be told that she’s almost 24 hours late. industry didn’t even warrant a men- telephone wire. He goes on to say that
Her disorientation at having blacked out tion. a mathematician’s grasp of the pat-
and lost an entire day is compounded
terns that constitute beauty doesn’t
when she concludes that she hallucinated What does using mathematics as a diminish its emotional impact, but
an encounter with an old woman who
central plot element do? rather deepens it.
gave her a pair of glasses with a crack in
From a plot perspective, the equation
one lens that have unusual properties:
of the title is purely a MacGuffin, and Did your own family dynamics
they allow her to see a boy who looks a lot
could presumably be any treasure that influence the interactions of the
like Noah. Maberry sympathetically
would keep the characters searching, Severy family?
depicts Rain’s struggle to maintain her
fighting, and tearing their hair out. I don’t come from a mathematical or
sanity, but familiar genre material,
It’s really through the characters and scientific family, but I do come from a
including Rain’s battle with an evil figure
their world, not the plot mechanics, family that at one point or other has
whose name should not be uttered, soon
that the mathematics angle sings for been labeled as weird. My parents were
overshadows the initially moving human
me. How does a given character’s aggressively uninterested in fitting in.
story. (Mar.)
numerical talents—or lack thereof— Much of my childhood was spent
shape how they move through life? roughing it in the woods of Flagstaff
The Neighbors
How does this unifying religion of and generally feeling separate from
Hannah Mary McKinnon. Mira, $15.99 trade
mathematics affect each member of my classmates—this at a time before
paper (384p) ISBN 978-0-7783-1100-3
this family? It just so happens that the weird was cool. The Severys are not my
Nate Morris has no idea that Liam
math element was roomy enough to family, but the flavors of eccentricity
Jefferson, his new next-door neighbor in
Bromley, England, shares an intimate allow for a whodunit and some grue- and otherness are certainly there.
history with his wife, Abby—and neither some deaths. —Lenny Picker
Abby nor Liam enlightens him in
McKinnon’s enjoyable if flawed second
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