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Here you will find older scratches, musings and other detritus that once were located on the front pages, but have now faded.

Filed away here to collect dust and cobwwwebs in perpetuity, links may break, facts may change and data may corrupt.

On occasion I may come down here to tidy, but for the most, I prefer to leave the past where it lies.

 

The Oxford Murders

Guillermo Martinez

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

Godel's Theorem of Incompleteness is a familiar territory to the young South American mathematician who arrives in Oxford. Murder, however, is not. Yet barely has he greeted his elderly landlady - and her rather lucious granddaughter - when he is bidding her a posthumous farewell. Mrs Eagleton is murdered in her wheelchair.. The only clue to the crime is a cryptic symbol and the words 'first of the series'.

It's not much to go on, but its enough to appeal to Arthur Seldom, one of the leading minds in the logic. His most famous work of philosophy contains a chapter on serial killers. This killer, clearly, has read it. And the second murder, of an elderly patient, confirms that his methods of killing are deliberately designed to appeal to mathematicians. And that he's an intellectual megalomaniac...

A so so thriller, made interesting only by the brief references to Oxford, and te translation to English doesn't make it an easy, flowing read.

30 Jun 2007 21:10 | (0) comments | Books

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