Description
Gรถdel's Theorem of Incompleteness is 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 luscious 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 'the first in the series'.It's not much to go on, but it's enough to appeal to Arthur Seldom, one of the leading minds in 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 hospital patient, confirms that his methods of killing are deliberately designed to appeal to mathematicians. And that he's an intellectual megalomaniac.
But what is he trying to signal? Why the symbols? What mathematical equation must be solved? Our hero, thrilled to be working with the complex Seldom, is also intrigued by the aesthetic of simplicity. He's searching for that mental balm - order within chaos - as he follows the steps of a theorem. One that may well be connected to a fatal car crash nearly three decades previously...
