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1 to 999 (1981) |
 | Isaac Asimov |
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When cryptologists try to break a simple code, one of the key clues is
the frequency with which letters appear. In English, the letter "a"
is one of the most frequently used letters. It is therefore... (more) |
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4.50 from Paddington (1957) |
 | Agatha Christie |
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A suggestion for your site: In the Agatha Christie novel 4.50 from Paddington an important role is played by Lucy Eyelesbarrow, a woman in her thirties who has a First in Maths from Oxford. She declined... (more) |
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Advanced Calculus of Murder (1988) |
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| Erik Rosenthal |
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In the second book in the Dan Brodsky series (following Calculus of Murder by the same author), Brodsky is invited to COTCA (the Conference on Operator Theory and C*-Algebras at Oxford University). While... (more) |
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Adventure of the Final Problem (1893) |
|
| Sir Arthur Conan Doyle |
|
This first Sherlock Holmes story about Professor Moriarty (later to be
viewed as Holmes' arch enemy) introduces him as a professor of
mathematics who won fame as a young man for his extension of the
binomial... (more) |
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The Adventure of the Russian Grave (1995) |
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| William Barton / Michael Capobianco |
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Even in the old Arthur Conan Doyle stories, Sherlock Holmes' arch-nemesis was a mathematician. Moriarty was said to be a math professor who (when he wasn't being evil) worked on the binomial theorem and... (more) |
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The Adventures of the Parrot (2008) |
|
| Gary Brown |
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Gary I. Brown, chair of the math department at CSBSJU in St. Joseph MN, has written two detective stories in which "The Parrot" uses mathematics (specifically, non-zero sum games and fair division problems) to solve the mysteries. The stories appear together in a new book from North Star Press which is available from Amazon.com .
(more) |
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After Math (1997) |
|
| Miriam Webster |
|
The ghost of math professor Ray Bellwether tries to solve the mystery of
his own murder in this `first novel' by Amy Babich (Webster is just a
pseudonym). Babich has a Ph.D. in mathematics (and a Master's... (more) |
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After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall (2012) |
|
| Nancy Kress |
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The last 26 humans alive resort to kidnapping children from the past in order to save themselves from the oppressive aliens who keep them in "The Shell". Mathematics enters in the form of Julie Kahn,... (more) |
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All Cry Chaos (2011) |
|
| Leonard Rosen |
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When a mathematician is killed in an explosion immediately before presenting his paper on the inevitability of a one-world economy to the World Trade Organization, the case falls to Interpol agent Henri... (more) |
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And Be a Villain (1948) |
|
| Rex Stout |
|
Rex
Stout and his seventy some Nero Wolfe novels are generally regarded as
amongst the greatest mystery novels ever written. They read as fresh today
as when the series started in 1934, and they... (more) |
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Bad Boy Brawley Brown (2002) |
|
| Walter Mosley |
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This is the sixth book in the highly praised Easy Rawlins mysteries
that began with DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS. They are set in post-WWII
black Los Angeles, and unfold over the years. (The... (more) |
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The Bangalore Detectives Club (2022) |
|
| Harini Narendra |
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On the first page of this mystery set in 1920's India, a scrap of paper identifies the person a desperate character seeks:
MRS KAVERI MURTHY, Mathematician and Lady Detective.
The rest of the novel... (more) |
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The Barking Clock (1947) |
|
| Harry Stephen Keeler / Hazel Goodwin Keeler |
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Tuddleton T. Trotter, author of a book which claims that all criminal mysteries can be solved mathematically, has only hours to save Joe Czeszczicki, a death row inmate soon to be electrocuted for the... (more) |
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Benchmark (2014) |
|
| Catherine Aird |
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This short story does little more than set up the scenario of the famous Prisoner's Dilemma from game theory. The detectives do discuss the connection between their situation and that theoretical example... (more) |
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Bianca (1984) |
|
| Nanni Moretti (director and screenplay) |
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A math teacher (played by Nanni Moretti himself) has odd obsessions and compulsions in this film, including his crush on colleague Bianca. Although his anti-social behavior seems to be destroying his... (more) |
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The Bird with the Broken Wing (1930) |
|
| Agatha Christie |
|
The Harley Quin stories (this collection, plus two later stories) are amongst the most peculiar mysteries ever written. (They certainly are Dame Agatha's most peculiar. They were also her personal... (more) |
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The Bishop Murder Case (1928) |
|
| S.S. van Dine (pseudonym of Willard Huntington Wright) |
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Our hero, Vance, says at the end of this mystery novel: "At the outset I was able to postulate a mathematician as the criminal agent. The difficulty of naming the murderer lay in the fact that nearly... (more) |
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The Body Counter (2018) |
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| Anne Frasier |
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Detective Jude Fontaine must stop a pathological killer whose murder sprees are dictated by the Fibonacci sequence.
Fontaine is known for her ability to read people. (She often can tell when people... (more) |
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The Body Outside the Kremlin (2020) |
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| James L. May |
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This novel is a combination of historical fiction and a murder mystery, with literary ambitions. The narrator is a former math student who is sent to an island prison in the early days of the USSR. There... (more) |
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A Calculated Demise (2007) |
|
| Robert Spiller |
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A high school math teacher, Bonnie Pinkwater, solves the mystery surrounding the murder of a PE teacher, a student, and the family of the boy suspected in the killing.
This sequel to The Witch of Agnesi... (more) |
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Calculus of Murder (1986) |
|
| Erik Rosenthal |
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"The hero is a part-time instructor and
researcher at Berkeley and moonlights as a PI. He solves his cases
using calculus. The narrative is excellent, humorous, and believable."
Actually, I just... (more) |
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The Cambridge Theorem (1990) |
|
| Tony Cape |
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It is a British-Russian spy novel in the style of Le Carre that is set in Cambridge, UK. If you like that sort of thing, fine. It is true that the murdered genius is a math graduate student, and he leaves... (more) |
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Cardano and the Case of the Cubic (2005) |
|
| Jeff Adams |
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This parody of early 20th century "Hard Boiled Private Detective" novels is instead a short story about 16th century mathematician Gerolamo Cardano.
Its opening paragraphs clearly set the tone:
It... (more) |
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Case of Lies (2005) |
|
| Perri O'Shaughnessy |
|
An old, unsolved casino murder becomes mathematical when three of the witnesses turn out to have been math students using their skills to win at gambling. Quite a bit of detailed discussion of number... (more) |
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The Case of the Flying Hands (2001) |
|
| Harry Stephen Keeler / Hazel Goodwin Keeler |
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Quiribus Brown, a 7 1/2 foot tall man raised on a farm by a retired mathematician who taught him nothing but math, must solve four crimes using mathematics or be imprisoned on charges of perjury by his... (more) |
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The Case of the Murdered Mathematician (2001) |
|
| Julia Barnes / Kathy Ivey |
|
This story is actually a fictionalized account of the "Murder Mystery" game
played by the MAA Student Mathematics Club at Western Carolina University.
Clues provide insight into possible motivations... (more) |
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The Catalyst [The Strange Attractor] (1991) |
|
| Desmond Cory |
|
Mathematics professor John Dobie gets caught up in a truly mind-boggling
mystery when one of his former students, his wife's best friend, and then
his own wife wind up dead, and the police consider him to be a prime
suspect.
This is the first, my personal favorite, of the three "Professor Dobie
Mysteries" written by British author Desmond Cory. (See also "The Mask of Zeus" and " (more) |
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Chasing Vermeer (2004) |
|
| Blue Balliet |
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A mystery novel for 6th graders. The first of a set of 3 separate “mystery” books in the “Hardy Boys / Nancy Drew“ genre. Two children, Calder and Petra, are neighbors and classmates... (more) |
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Child's Play (1986) |
|
| Isaac Asimov |
|
Young Griswold uses something he just learned
in elementary school math class to solve a minor stumper. (Be
warned: the problem has a minor bug. Change "mix" to "nix".)
Published in the... (more) |
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Christmas at Cardwell Ranch (2013) |
|
| B.J. Daniels |
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In keeping with my expectations of a Harlequin Romance novel, Christmas at Cardwell Ranch does have an improbable love affair, between a modern-day cowboy and a female mathematician. However, this one... (more) |
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Crimes and Math Demeanors (2007) |
|
| Leith Hathout |
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The short mysteries in this book remind me of "Encyclopedia Brown". After a brief description of a sometimes contrived dilemma facing our young detective -- 14 year old Ravi -- you are given an opportunity... (more) |
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The Crimson Cipher (2010) |
|
| Susan Page Davis |
|
A code breaker seeks to solve the mystery of the murder of her father, a math professor who had been working on an encryption device at the beginning of World War I in this "Christian adventure/romance". (more) |
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (2003) |
|
| Mark Haddon |
|
The narrator of this novel is Christopher Boone, an autistic teenager who is trying to figure out who killed his neighbor's dog. Although Christopher is very good at math, he is not very good at understanding... (more) |
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The Da Vinci Code (2003) |
|
| Dan Brown |
|
The last act of a dying curator at the Louvre is an attempt to pass on, in code, a secret that he did not want to take to the grave. Among the things needed to "decode" this secret message is a recognition... (more) |
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Dalrymple’s Equation (1956) |
|
| Paul Fairman |
|
A tall tale about an alien “from Arva Majoris [...] a planet in a galaxy beyond the conception of [humanity’s] most brilliant minds.” . He’s taken on the name, “Tennyson Dalrymple” and uses... (more) |
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Dark Matter: The Private Life of Sir Isaac Newton (2002) |
|
| Philip Kerr |
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A multiple-murder mystery which outlandishly casts Newton in the role of Sherlock Holmes during his tenure as Warden at the British Royal Mint (Watson is played Christopher Ellis, nephew of mathematician... (more) |
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Dark of the Moon (1995) |
|
| John Dickson Carr |
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The crime novel "Dark of the Moon" by John Dickson Carr has as one of its characters a female "mathematician", Camilla Bruce. (She is called a mathematician and is enthusiastic about the subject but... (more) |
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Death and the Compass (La Muerte y La Brujula) (1968) |
|
| Jorge Luis Borges |
|
This is considered one of Borges' greatest short stories, and was even made into a film by "RepoMan" director Alex Cox. The following review from Alejandro Satz explains the mathematical content, but... (more) |
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Death of a Doxy (1966) |
|
| Rex Stout |
|
The murder victim's brother-in-law is a high school math
teacher. Nero Wolfe believes this to be relevant at one
point, even quoting some mathematical history from an
encyclopedia.
I... (more) |
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Death of an Avid Reader: A Kate Shackleton Mystery (2017) |
|
| Frances Brody |
|
A strangled body is found in a supposedly haunted library in England in the 1920's. It turns out to belong to Dr. Potter, a math professor known for being a stylish dandy as well as for his intelligence.... (more) |
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Death Qualified: A Mystery of Chaos (1992) |
|
| Kate Willhelm |
|
The book only becomes science fiction towards the end. For most of it, it follows the format of a mystery in which there are several murders (which remain mysterious to the reader until near to the end)... (more) |
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Deep Lay the Dead (1942) |
|
| Frederick C. Davis |
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This is a decent but familiar and unremarkable murder mystery, the kind in which an odd assortment of people are trapped together in a house, not knowing which of them is the killer. In this case, they... (more) |
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The Devotion of Suspect X [Yôgisha X no kenshin] (2005) |
|
| Keigo Higashino |
|
Reclusive high school math teacher Tetsuya Ishigami is "devoted" to two things: his math research and his neighbor, Yasuko Hanaoka. When Hanaoka and her daughter kill her abusive ex-husband, they are... (more) |
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The Distant Dead (2020) |
|
| Heather Young |
|
When a boy named Sal discovers the burned body of his middle school math teacher, two amateur sleuths try to determine who killed him. One of them is Jake, the volunteer fireman to whom Sal initially... (more) |
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Do the Math #2: The Writing on the Wall (2008) |
|
| Wendy Lichtman |
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In this sequel to Do the Math: Secrets, Lies and Algebra, a middle school student who likes to think of things in terms of mathematical notation (for example, calling her friend Miranda "|m|" because she... (more) |
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Do the Math: Secrets, Lies, and Algebra (2007) |
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| Wendy Lichtman |
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A math-loving eighth grader applies mathematical concepts to problems in her social life.
According to the book jacket, the author has a degree in mathematics and writes pieces for many periodicals.... (more) |
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The Dobie Paradox (1993) |
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| Desmond Cory |
|
Another Professor Dobie mystery (see also The
Catalyst and The Mask of Zeus) in which the so-called "Columbo with a chair in mathematics" solves the mystery of the murder of a young girl. There is less... (more) |
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Echoes from the Past (2006) |
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| Edward Michel-Bird |
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A young mathematics professor becomes involved in a mystery and a love affair when the identity of his true biological father is called into question. No mathematical ideas or results are discussed in... (more) |
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The Eighth Detective (2020) |
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| Alex Pavesi |
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Many years ago, math professor Grant McCallister published a paper mathematically analyzing the structure of murder mystery fiction. He even self-published a collection of short stories illustrating several... (more) |
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Electric (2004) |
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| Chad Taylor |
|
Three of the characters in this novel are mathematicians. Sam is a former statistician who now works at a successful Auckland data retrieval company. Because he is attracted to the hydrodynamic equations... (more) |
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An Elegant Solution (2013) |
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| Paul Robertson |
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A fictionalized account of the life of Leonhard Euler, focusing on his relationship with the Bernoullis and told from the perspective of Christian theology. The novel also takes on aspects of a murder... (more) |
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Elementary (Episode: Solve for X) (2013) |
|
| Jerry Levine (director)/Jeffrey Paul King (screenplay) |
|
In this episode from the second season of Elementary featuring a modern version of Sherlock Holmes with a female Watson, the duo discover equations in invisible ink on the walls in a murdered mathematician's... (more) |
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The Elusive Bullet (1931) |
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| John Rhode (aka Cecil John Charles Street) |
|
Dr. Priestly is a professor whose hobby is "the mathematical detection of crime". In this story, he must convince the police inspector that the man he plans to accuse of murder is, in fact, innocent.
The... (more) |
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The Elusive Chauffeur (2008) |
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| David H. Brown |
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This mystery novel appears to have been conceived as a means for the author to "spread the word" about two things that are important to him: mathematics and his Christian faith. In it, a private detective... (more) |
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The Escher Twist (2002) |
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| Jane Langton |
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Part of the author's Homer/Mary Kelly series of mysteries based in
Concord MA. The plot centers on a crystallographer falling in love
with a stranger at an exhibit of Escher work, and... (more) |
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Evariste and Heloise (2008) |
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| Marco Abate |
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This contribution to the collection The Shape of Content is difficult to classify. Combining fiction and fact, essay and comic book, fantasy and philosophy, it essentially takes the form of a proposal... (more) |
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The Fall of Man In Wilmslow (2009) |
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| David Lagercrantz |
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Before he gained fame in the US as the Swedish author taking over the mystery series featuring the fictional heroine Lisbeth Sander, David Lagercrantz wrote this novel about the death of mathematician... (more) |
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The Fatal Equation (1933) |
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| Arthur Strangeland |
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This is a very well-crafted murder mystery executed quite ingeniously. A mathematical physicist - Jan Friede - sets up a system of 20+ equations which eliminate the time variable from Einstein's equations... (more) |
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Fermat's Room (La Habitacion de Fermat) (2007) |
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| Luis Piedrahita / Rodrigo Sopeña |
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In this Spanish thriller, four mathematicians are invited to a booby trapped room where they must solve mathematical puzzles to prevent the walls from closing in and crushing them. This leaves them little... (more) |
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Flame War: A Cyberthriller (1997) |
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| Joshua Quittner / Michelle Slatalla |
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A brilliant math professor invents a code that even the government will not be able to break. When he dies in an explosion, his daughter and the law student who (unknowingly) delivered the bomb that killed him work together to bring the killers to justice. (more) |
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Flowers Stained with Moonlight (2005) |
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| Catherine Shaw |
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In this sequel to The Three-Body Problem, Vanessa Duncan is called upon to save an innocent young woman, falsely suspected of murdering her older and unlikable husband. Although there is no mathematics... (more) |
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The Four-Color Puzzle: Falling Off the Map (2013) |
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| Lior Samson |
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A math professor becomes intrigued with a high school student he meets at an online tutoring site when she presents him with what appears to be a short and very clever proof of the four-color theorem.... (more) |
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The Fourth Quadrant (2011) |
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| Dorothy Lumley |
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The story has some elements of mathematics built in. A ransom note coded into a ciphered message broken up on paper in 4 quadrants, Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, references to the Difference Engine.... (more) |
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The Fractal Murders (2001) |
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| Mark Cohen |
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In this award winning (Top Ten Mysteries on the Book Sense 76 Fall List for 2002) mystery novel "Hard-Boiled" Detective Pepper Keane is hired by a tall and attractive math professor (with whom he of course... (more) |
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A Frayed Knot (2009) |
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| Felix Culp |
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Culp takes a classic mystery by Poe and retells it with knotted ropes taking the place of people. For example:
Tyler Trefoil was a Bowline knot....Salty-fibered seafaring knots such as Trefoil - as... (more) |
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Furuhata Ninzaburô (Episode 13) (1995) |
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| Kôki Mitani |
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In the last episode of the first season of this popular Japanese detective show, the inspector must solve the mystery of the murder of an award-winning mathematician. It turns out that the murderer was... (more) |
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The Future Engine (1995) |
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| Byron Tetrick |
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Charles Babbage's son calls on Sherlock Holmes to investigate the
theft of the Analytic Engine from its warehouse. The son gives a
description of its importance to mathematical calculations. But
it's his mention of the role of the binomial theorem in its working
that arouses Holmes's interest.
Published in Mike Resnick and M H Greenberg (eds) SHERLOCK HOLMES IN ORBIT.
(more) |
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Getting the Combination (1982) |
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| Isaac Asimov |
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Griswold figures out a combination by correctly guessing
the next number in a sequence.
AKA "Playing the Numbers". Published originally in the June 1982 issue of Gallery.
(more) |
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Go, Little Book (1972) |
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| Isaac Asimov |
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Combinatorics is used to break a "matchbook code".
One of the "Black Widower" mysteries written for Ellery Queen magazine.
See also these [2, 3] other BW stories. (more) |
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Hickory Dickory Shock! The Tale of Techies (2010) |
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| Sundip Gorai |
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This novel, which the author tells me is a best-seller in India, is a mystery thriller whose protagonist is a young man named "210". In the first chapter, which is available for free at the book's official... (more) |
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Hidden in Glass (1931) |
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| Paul Ernst |
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A murder mystery involving a mathematical physicist. One Professor Brainard, who is claimed to have mastered "the secret of the fourth dimension" (haven't they all in the pulps?), has a serious professional... (more) |
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Holy Disorders (1945) |
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| Edmund Crispin |
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Edmund
Crispin, pseudonym of Bruce Montgomery is generally considered the last of the British high literate mystery writers. He wrote a series of mysteries starring Gervase Fen, Oxford don, highly... (more) |
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Ibn Hakkan al-Bokhari, Dead in his Labyrinth (1951) |
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| Jorge Luis Borges |
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Two friends, a poet and a mathematician (who is described as the author of a study on "the theorem which Fermat did not write in the margin of a page of Diophantus") arrive at an abandoned house in the... (more) |
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The Image in the Mirror (1933) |
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| Dorothy Leigh Sayers |
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Lord Peter Wimsey, while staying at an inn, finds a stranger is
completely rapt in reading and rereading from a book of Wimsey's.
It turns out to be H G Wells' story of a man inverted via the
fourth... (more) |
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In the Shadow of Gotham (2009) |
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| Stefanie Pintoff |
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The first victim in this murder mystery is a female math grad student at Columbia University in the year 1905. I'm sure many of the fans of this Edgar Award winning first-novel would mention the historical... (more) |
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The Ingenious Mr. Spinola (1924) |
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| Ernest Bramah |
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Max Carrados is a blind amateur detective genius, quite popular in the early 20th century, but mostly forgotten since then. (Such is also the fate of E.B.'s Kai Lung fantasy stories.)
... (more) |
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An Instance of the Fingerpost (1999) |
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| Iain Pears |
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A murder mystery set in Oxford in the 1660's. Mathematician John
Wallis plays a major role as a character in the book (and Newton a
small role). See the review at MAA
online.
A very fine piece... (more) |
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The Invention of Zero [Die Erfindung der Null] (2020) |
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| Michael Wildenhain |
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This German novel records a "game of cat and mouse" between a prosecutor and a suspected murderer, who happens to be a mathematician. The young prosecutor tries to prove that Martin Gödeler, who holds... (more) |
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The Investigation (1959) |
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| Stanislaw Lem |
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In investigating a bizarre case of missing -- and apparently resurrected bodies -- an investigator at Scotland Yard consults mystics, philosophers, and (most significantly to the book as well as to this... (more) |
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Invisible (2014) |
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| James Patterson / David Ellis |
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The (somewhat unlikeable) protagonist of this thriller is an FBI agent who loved numbers as a little girl and still prefers statistical analysis of data to time spent with other people. Combining this anti-social behavior with an obsessive desire to find a pattern among a huge number of unsolved murders leads her to begin her own investigation. (more) |
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Irrational Numbers (2008) |
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| Robert Spiller |
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Another mystery about high school math teacher Bonnie Pinkwater by the author of Witch of Agnesi. Like the others in this series, this is a murder mystery with adult themes (violence, homosexuality, etc.)... (more) |
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The Jester and the Mathematician (2000) |
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| Alan R. Gordon |
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A short historical fiction piece involving Leonardo of Pisa ("Fibonacci"). Interesting story which features Fibonacci talking briefly about his rabbit-series/sequence, his abacus-duel with Pisa's foremost... (more) |
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A Killer Theorem (2007) |
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| Colin Adams |
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Mangum, P.I. returns in this mystery in which the unproven Gauss' Last Lemma is wielded as a murder weapon. Apparently, a certain approach to proving it is so enticing that merely showing it to mathematicians... (more) |
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The Last Equation of Isaac Severy (2018) |
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| Nova Jacobs |
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After mathematician Isaac Severy's suspicious death, his grand-daughter follows the clues he left her to find and protect his final discovery.
In this murder mystery/family drama, Hazel Severy leaves... (more) |
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Law and Order: Criminal Intent (Episode: Inert Dwarf) (2004) |
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| Renee Balcer (story) / Warren Leight (script) / Alex Chapple (director) |
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The collaborator of a world-famous, wheelchair bound mathematical physicist is murdered. When the detectives investigate, suspicion falls on the mathematician's wife/nurse who appears to be abusing him.
Like... (more) |
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Let's Consider Two Spherical Chickens (2016) |
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| Tommaso Bolognesi |
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Although it takes the form of a murder mystery, Bolognesi's "Let's Consider Two Spherical Chickens" really is more of an essay than a work of fiction. Like the other chapters from the collection in which... (more) |
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Lewis (Episode: Reputation) (2006) |
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| Russell Lewis (Story) / Stephen Churchett (Screenplay) |
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In this pilot episode of the spin-off from the popular Inspector Lewis television series, a female math student is murdered while she participates in a sleep study. Perfect numbers show up in the form... (more) |
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The Library Paradox (2006) |
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| Catherine Shaw |
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Vanessa Duncan returns as the skilled amateur detective of Victorian England in this third mystery novel by "Catherine Shaw". (See The Three-Body Problem and Flowers Stained with Moonlight for the earlier... (more) |
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The Locked House of Pythagoras [P. no Misshitsu] (1999) |
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| Soji Shimada |
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A locked-room mystery which I found disorienting, needlessly complex and a bit incomprehensible, with very stilted writing, a know-it-all kid detective who has a magical god’s eye-view of everything,... (more) |
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Lord Darcy (1966) |
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| Randall Garrett |
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The stories in this collection of fantastical murder mysteries take place in an alternate universe where magic rather than science has become the primary human tool for manipulating the world. Frequent... (more) |
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The Madness of Crowds (2021) |
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| Louise Penny |
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In Penny's 17th murder mystery featuring detective Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of Sûreté du Québec, a statistician with a controversial political philosophy speaks at the local university, resulting... (more) |
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Magpie Lane (2020) |
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| Lucy Atkins |
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This wonderful novel is difficult to describe, somewhere between literary fiction and a procedural mystery with the atmosphere of a supernatural thriller. The book is narrated by Dee, a nanny who is being... (more) |
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Maid of Murder (2010) |
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| Amanda Flower |
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Like the author of this murder mystery, protagonist India Hayes is a librarian at a small midwestern college. Presumably unlike the author, Hayes must prove the innocence of her mathematician brother... (more) |
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Mangum, P.I. (2004) |
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| Colin Adams |
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A parody of the hard-boiled private detective genre in which ``P.I.'' stands for ``Principal Investigator'', a phrase familiar to anyone who has applied for a research grant. In this hilarious story,... (more) |
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The Mask of Zeus (1992) |
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| Desmond Cory |
|
Math is discussed a lot in this "Professor Dobie Mystery" novel because both the `detective' (Dobie) and the victim (his former Ph.D. student) are mathematicians. Of course, the math doesn't have much... (more) |
|
|
The Math Code (2005) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
|
A friend of mine once told me that he believes that mathematicians invented intentionally confusing notations to keep others from understanding what they were saying. I'm sure this is not true. We mathematicians... (more) |
|
|
Math is Murder (2012) |
|
| Robert C. Brigham / James B. Reed |
|
This is a murder mystery co-written by an emeritus math professor and a retired crime scene investigator. The victim was an egotistical and (almost unbelievably) unpleasant mathematics department chair... (more) |
|
|
Mathematical Doom (1936) |
|
| Paul Ernst |
|
A detective, one Mr. Pearson, catches the crooks using a little geometry. As the story tagline says,
“Crooks try to subtract a copper from life - and find he had added up a Mathematical Doom for... (more) |
|
|
Mathematical Goodbye (1999) |
|
| Hiroshi Mori |
|
Mori is a popular author of mystery novels in Japan and a former professor of engineering at Nagoya University. Li-Chang Hung, who has read the books translated into Chinese, has suggested that I add... (more) |
|
|
The Mathematicians of Grizzly Drive (1988) |
|
| Josef Skvorecky |
|
A detective story, in the "hard boiled" genre, featuring Eve Adam, a sexy nightclub performer who solves crimes in her free time. In this story, she visits a house where mathematicians gather to entertain... (more) |
|
|
Maths a mort (1990) |
|
| Margot Bruyère |
|
This murder mystery which takes place at the IHES in Paris was originally entitled "Dis-moi qui tu aimes (je te dirai
qui tu hais)". However, it has just been
be republished (Fall of 2002) with a change... (more) |
|
|
Mattemorden (2015) |
|
| Alexander Barth/Gustav Öhman Spjuth |
|
In this Swedish TV series, a police officer with dyscalculia and a "professor" who can only do math when he is drunk are working together to solve a murder in which the only clue is a math problem. Unfortunately,... (more) |
|
|
The Mentalist (Episode: 18-5-4) (2010) |
|
| Bruno Heller (writer) / Leonard Dick (writer) / Charles Beeson (director) |
|
In this episode of the series about agents from the California Bureau of Investigation, an unemployed mathematician is murdered by someone wearing a clown suit.
The victim, Noah Valiquette, was a... (more) |
|
|
Mirror Image (1972) |
|
| Isaac Asimov |
|
A robot volunteers the aid of his human, Earthling friend to settle a
dispute between a pair of feuding "spacer" mathematicians. It seems that an
old mathematician (over 270 years old in fact) and a... (more) |
|
|
Moriarty by Modem (1995) |
|
| Jack Nimersheim |
|
A cyberversion of Sherlock Holmes is created to track down an accidently
released cyberversion of Moriarty. The big clue involves both the binomial
theorem and binomial variables.
Published in... (more) |
|
|
Murder and Mendelssohn (Phryne Fisher Mystery) (2014) |
|
| Kerry Greenwood |
|
As a fan of the Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries TV Series, I was pleased to see that the 20th novel in the series that inspired it features a mathematician, giving me an excuse to read it.
Phryne Fisher... (more) |
|
|
Murder at Queen's Landing (2021) |
|
| Andrea Penrose |
|
This is the fourth in a series of books in which romance sparks between Wrexford (a chemist) and Sloan (an artist) while they solve mysteries in Regency-era England. In this one, the mystery involves... (more) |
|
|
Murder at the Margin (1978) |
|
| Marshall Jevons |
|
This is the first of the Henry Spearman murder mysteries (the others
being THE FATAL EQUILIBRIUM and A DEADLY INDIFFERENCE--they can be read
in any order). These unusual murder mysteries star Harvard... (more) |
|
|
Murder by Mathematics (1948) |
|
| Hector Hawton |
|
The chair of the mathematics department at a British university and a shady bookseller are the victims in this "whodunnit"
published by Ward Lock & Co. (London and Melbourne) in 1948.
It was thanks... (more) |
|
|
Murder in the Great Church (2020) |
|
| Tefcros Michaelides |
|
Essentially all I know about this book is that it is a murder mystery which takes place in 6th century Constantinople and that the primary suspect is a young mathematician. Unfortunately, I do not read... (more) |
|
|
Murder, She Conjectured (2005) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
|
A police psychologist attending a conference in Cambridge, England is pulled into an unsolved murder mystery by her mathematician boyfriend. An important theme of the story is the oppresive sexism that... (more) |
|
|
The Murdered Mathematician (1949) |
|
| Harry Stephen Keeler |
|
This book is probably the least believable thing I've ever read, but lots of fun!
Quiribus Brown is a 7 1/2 foot tall man who was raised by his father on a farm in Indiana. His father was a math professor... (more) |
|
|
Musgrave Ritual (1893) |
|
| Sir Arthur Conan Doyle |
|
A tiny bit of mathematics is used by Sherlock Holmes
to solve this mystery. In it, he ties together the disappearance of a
housemaid, the discovery of the dead body of the chief butler and a strange
poem... (more) |
|
|
The Mystery of Khufu's Tomb (1935) |
|
| Talbot Mundy |
|
A rapid-read, reasonably entertaining novel about the real location of the Pharaoh Khufu's (Cheops) tomb and the fabulous treasury buried therein. An old, Chinese mathematician spends decades decoding... (more) |
|
|
The N-Plus-1th-Degree (1968) |
|
| Stephen Barr |
|
A mathematician is accused of murdering a man who flirted with his wife. Her faith in him (which is so strong, she describes it as being to the n-plus-1th degree) allows her to figure out how and by... (more) |
|
|
Naked Came the Post-modernist (2013) |
|
| Sarah Lawrence College Writing Class WRIT-3303-R / Melvin Jules Bukiet |
|
Written as a group project by the students in a creative writing class at Sarah Lawrence College, this wacky academic farce takes the form of a whodunit, trying to identify the murderer of a math professor. (more) |
|
|
The Name of the Rose (1980) |
|
| Umberto Eco |
|
A mystery novel which takes place in a 14th Century monastery by the brilliant Italian author, Umberto Eco. This book only has a small amount of math in it, but I frequently receive recommendations to... (more) |
|
|
Nearly Gone (2015) |
|
| Elle Cosimano |
|
Nearly Boswell has (obviously) a really cool name. She also has a strong interest in her science and math classes. And, for some reason, she also has the ability to taste emotions when she touches other... (more) |
|
|
The Nine Tailors (1934) |
|
| Dorothy Leigh Sayers |
|
This Lord Peter Wimsey novel is often considered Sayers' best. The plot revolves around the art of change ringing, often called "campanology" by non-campanologists. As usual with Sayers, she makes... (more) |
|
|
No One You Know (2008) |
|
| Michelle Richmond |
|
Having felt overshadowed by her mathematician older sister when she was alive, the main character becomes obsessed with her murder after the sister is killed. Using her sister's notebook describing her... (more) |
|
|
Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less (1976) |
|
| Jeffrey Archer |
|
A mathematics professor who lectures at Oxford on group theory is among four clever people who plot to get revenge on the con artist who duped them in this, the first novel by politician and now best-selling... (more) |
|
|
NUMB3RS (2005) |
|
| Nick Falacci / Cheryl Heuton |
|
This TV crime drama (premiered January 2005) follows the adventures of a pair of brothers, one a mathematics professor and the other an FBI agent, as they combine forces to solve mysteries.
Cool effects... (more) |
|
|
Oh, Brother (2007) |
|
| Stanley Hart |
|
A serious mystery/adventure novella from an author better known as a script writer for the old Carol Burnett show. A professor solicits the help of his brother, a retired police detective, in order to... (more) |
|
|
The One Best Bet [Flashlight] (1911) |
|
| Samuel Hopkins Adams |
|
“Average Jones” is a collection of eleven tales of detection, solved by a very smart, young man, Mr. Jones. His catchy alias came about because “his parents had foredoomed him to it when they furnished... (more) |
|
|
One Under the Eight (1994) |
|
| Catherine Aird |
|
A creative but simple mathematical code is utilized by a criminal to secretly pass a number (one that will disable a security system) to an accomplice during a wine tasting event in this short detective... (more) |
|
|
Out of the Sun: A Novel (1996) |
|
| Robert Goddard |
|
Harry Barnett (first introduced in the novel Into the
Blue) investigates the circumstances that lead to
his son's accident. The son, 33 year old math genius, lies in a coma
and the accident is somehow... (more) |
|
|
The Oxford Murders (2004) |
|
| Guillermo Martinez |
|
A young, Argentinian mathematician visiting the UK is drawn into a murder mystery when his landlord (a woman who had worked as a code breaker during World War II) is killed. A clue and the words "The... (more) |
|
|
The Parrot's Theorem (2000) |
|
| Denis Guedj |
|
This is an ambitious novel, a magical fantasy about a talking parrot bought at a flea market in France who, with the help of the personal library of a reclusive mathematical genius, teaches some children... (more) |
|
|
Percentage Player (1958) |
|
| Leslie Charteris |
|
A really hilarious and confusing tale which has to be read very slowly to get the full gist, as it happens in almost every single probability problem one tries to solve. How many times have you been... (more) |
|
|
A Piece of Justice (1995) |
|
| Jill Paton Walsh |
|
The mathematics of tilings and quilting play background roles in this mystery in which a graduate student attempts to write a biography of the (fictitious) mathematician Gideon Summerfield. Summerfield... (more) |
|
|
Powerball 310 (2007) |
|
| K.T. Reid |
|
The premise of this amusing crime caper is a gang of experts who pull of a successful theft of a $310 million Powerball lottery jackpot by generating a winning ticket just after the numbers have been... (more) |
|
|
Prime Suspects: The Anatomy of Integers and Permutations (2019) |
|
| Andrew Granville / Jennifer Granville / Robert J. Lewis (Illustrator) |
|
In this graphic novel, the surprising coincidences between complete factorizations of integers, permutations, and polynomials is presented as if it were the discovery of a forensic team investigating seemingly... (more) |
|
|
Princess Elizabeth's Spy: A Maggie Hope Mystery (2012) |
|
| Susan Elia MacNeal |
|
Maggie Hope is assigned to stay with the royal family. As we know from her first appearance in Mr. Churchill's Secretary, Maggie has an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Wellesley and was about... (more) |
|
|
Probability Murder (2006) |
|
| Michael Flynn |
|
This amusing, if a bit farcical, little tale unfolds in a bar on a very rainy night, where Sam Hourani, a homicide detective, recounts to the storyteller how he thinks that a recent “accident”... (more) |
|
|
The Problem of Cell 13 (1907) |
|
| Jacques Futrelle |
|
"The story which introduces Professor S. F. X. van Dusen,
professional scientific supergenius, who lends his talents
to solving baffling mysteries. He is described as primarily
... (more) |
|
|
Professor and Colonel (1987) |
|
| Ruth Berman |
|
In this unusual story, we get to see another side to Sherlock Holmes' arch enemy, the brilliant but evil mathematician Professor Moriarty. Here, rather than perpetrating a crime, Moriarty is merely visiting with his brother, discussing the significance of his research into asteroid dynamics. (See also Asimov's take on this same subject.) (more) |
|
|
Professor Conundrum Mysteries! (2008) |
|
| Bill Streifer |
|
My book, Professor Conundrum Mysteries!...combines math education (non-fiction) and historical fiction.
The book consists of five stories that take place during important events in 20th century U.S.... (more) |
|
|
The Purloined Letter (1844) |
|
| Edgar Allan Poe |
|
"This is the third and last C. Auguste Dupin mystery. The
Prefect of Paris police explains a very delicate situation
to Dupin, involving a royal letter whose possession grants
its bearer great... (more) |
|
|
The Puzzling Adventures of Dr. Ecco (1988) |
|
| Dennis Shasha |
|
The first in a sequence of delightful books. This one offers 38 puzzles packaged very well as a collection of stories solved by Dr. Ecco. To introduce him:
“Dr. Jacob Ecco is a mathematical... (more) |
|
|
Pythagorean Crimes (2006) |
|
| Tefcros Michaelides |
|
This murder mystery takes place amid the exciting developments occurring in the mathematical and artistic communities in Europe between 1900 and 1931. Much of what one will learn by reading this book... (more) |
|
|
Qui perd gagne! (2003) |
|
| Laurent Bénégui (Director) |
|
In this French film, a math teacher claims to have a system for winning the lottery.
I tracked this down after seeing the page on your site a couple of days ago. It is a very enjoyable movie, but... (more) |
|
|
Reading by Numbers (2009) |
|
| Aidan Doyle |
|
Elementary number theory and some superstitious numerology underlie this story, which appeared in the November 11, 2009 issue of the online Fantasy Magazine (though I would never describe this story as... (more) |
|
|
The Return of Moriarty (1974) |
|
| John Gardner |
|
The British spy thriller novelist, perhaps now best known
for his 007 novels, wrote three novels starring Professor
Moriarty, THE RETURN OF MORIARTY (UK title MORIARTY),
THE REVENGE OF MORIARTY... (more) |
|
|
Schaurige Mathematik (2007) |
|
| Alexander Mehlmann |
|
Professor Moriarty, the evil mathematician best known as the arch enemy of Sherlock Holmes, is both the hero and the narrator of this short story. He joins forces with Dracula and uses math to fight Jack... (more) |
|
|
Secrets to the Grave (2011) |
|
| Tami Hoag |
|
Mathematician Zander Zahn is suspected of having murdered an artist in this follow-up to the novel "Deeper than the Dead". Almost no mathematics is actually discussed, not even the tiny amount one often... (more) |
|
|
Serial Killer Sudoku (2009) |
|
| Shelley Freydont |
|
In this sequel to The Sudoku Murder, the former government mathematician who has taken over the puzzle museum in her old hometown catches a serial killer who leaves a sudoku at each crime scene. There... (more) |
|
|
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1974) |
|
| Nicholas Meyer |
|
Meyer presents an alternative view of Sherlock Holmes in this surprising novel: that of a deluded drug addict. In particular, and of interest to those who visit this Website, we learn that Professor Moriarty is only a kindly mathematician who once tutored Holmes in mathematics. The idea that he is a criminal mastermind (as we learn in Conan Doyle's stories) is just part of Holmes' paranoia.
(more) |
|
|
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) |
|
| Guy Ritchie (director) |
|
There is not much actual mathematics in this sequel which, like its predecessor, features a version of Sherlock Holmes portrayed by Robert Downey Jr. as more of an action hero than the one in Sir Arthur... (more) |
|
|
Sine of the Magus [aka The Magicians] (1954) |
|
| James Gunn |
|
A private detective is hired to track a magician who turns out not to be an expert at "tricks", but a real and powerful wizard. This is one of those works (see the "similars" list below) in which magic... (more) |
|
|
Sixty Million Trillion Combinations (1980) |
|
| Isaac Asimov |
|
Tom Trumbull, one of Asimov's regular "Black Widower" mystery
characters, wants to convince an eccentric mathematician (working on
Goldbach's conjecture) that his secret password is not safe.
Combinatorics... (more) |
|
|
Songs My Mother Never Taught Me (2007) |
|
| Selçuk Altun |
|
After his mother's death, a young Turkish man seeks his father's killer. His father was a very charismatic, conceited and famous mathematician, but aside from that there is little math in the book. The... (more) |
|
|
Spherical Mirrors, plane murders (2017) |
|
| Tefcros Michaelides |
|
Essentially all I know about this book is that it is a murder mystery which combines the conquest of Cyprus by Richard the Lionheart during the Crusades with a puzzle of optics posed in Ibn al-Haytham's... (more) |
|
|
The Square Cube Law (1952) |
|
| Fletcher Pratt |
|
JBS Haldane once wrote a wonderful article, “On Being the Right Size”, which can be found in James Newman’s “The World of Mathematics, Vol 2”. It encapsulates beautifully the idea that biologically,... (more) |
|
|
The Square Root of Murder (2002) |
|
| Paul Zindel |
|
A murder mystery written for a middle school aged audience in which a calculus professor is found pinned to a chalk board by a bolt fired from a crossbow. A formula on the board turns out to be an essential clue (though it involves only elementary arithmetic).
This novel for young readers should not be confused with the adult mystery novel with the same title by Ada Madison.
(more) |
|
|
The Square Root of Murder (2011) |
|
| Ada Madison |
|
Math professor Sophie Knowles turns amateur detective when an unpopular colleague is found dead in his office in this entertaining but light mystery novel.
From reading comments at Amazon, I have learned... (more) |
|
|
The Stranger House (2005) |
|
| Reginald Hill |
|
Sam is a young math student from Australia who travels to England seeking information about her grandmother. She finds that her quest becomes intertwined with that of a Spanish historian investigating... (more) |
|
|
Strip Search (2007) |
|
| William Bernhardt |
|
A detective is aided by an autistic child in capturing a serial killer who leaves equations written in the blood of his victims at the scenes of the grisly crimes.
In your MathFiction entry for William... (more) |
|
|
The Sudoku Murder (2007) |
|
| Shelley Freydont |
|
With the current popularity of sudoku puzzles, it is not surprising that a mystery novel with this title would appear. As a mystery, this one is quite decent. A mathematician who works for a government... (more) |
|
|
Summa Mathematica (2002) |
|
| Sean Doolittle |
|
Not really a mystery, but more of a "crime drama" in which a former math professor gets two offers he can't refuse: one from a crime boss who wants to hire him as his accountant and another from the police... (more) |
|
|
The Symbolic Logic of Murder (1960) |
|
| John Reese |
|
Through a combination of biblical mnemonics and Boolean algebra, our
heroes are able to solve a mysterious murder. Appears in Mathematical Magpie.
(more) |
|
|
Ten (1986) |
|
| Isaac Asimov |
|
We might argue that the particular words and symbols we use to express
mathematical concepts are not as important as the concepts themselves...and
mathematically that may well be the case. However,... (more) |
|
|
The Theory of Death (2015) |
|
| Faye Kellerman |
|
The apparent suicides of a math student and math professor at Kneed Loft College are investigated by a detective, his wife, and a former detective now studying law. It was sufficiently engrossing and... (more) |
|
|
Thirteen Diamonds (2000) |
|
| Alan Cook |
|
A murder mystery set in a retirement community in Chapel Hill, NC. During a bridge game at the club, one of the members, a Nobel-laureate in Economics, keels over and dies after receiving a perfect hand... (more) |
|
|
The Three Body Problem (2004) |
|
| Catherine Shaw |
|
A cleverly titled novel that uses a historical mathematical contest
and several characters based on real mathematicians as the basis for a
murder mystery. Of special interest is the novel's presentation... (more) |
|
|
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage (2015) |
|
| Sydney Padua |
|
This graphic novel starts out as a basically realistic fictionalized biography of the 19th century mathematicians Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, even if it is a biography with a snarky sense of humor.... (more) |
|
|
Thursday Next: First Among Sequels (2007) |
|
| Jasper Fforde |
|
As Vijay Fafat points out, the eponymous heroine of this series of humorous, fantasy mysteries has a daughter who is a math prodigy. Among other things, in this novel she finds a counter-example to Fermat's... (more) |
|
|
Touch-Me-Not (2010) |
|
| Cynthia Riggs |
|
In this installment of a series of mystery novels set on Martha's Vineyard, an electrician accidentally murders an employee who was blackmailing him and then is killed himself. Throughout most of the... (more) |
|
|
The Translated Man (2009) |
|
| Chris Braak |
|
Since the horrific Excelsior disaster, the subject of aetheric geometry has been banned. The ethical dilema for a young psychic is whether he should reveal to the detective he is assisting the tremendous... (more) |
|
|
Trueman Bradley: Aspie Detective (2012) |
|
| Alexei Maxim Russell |
|
Trueman Bradley moves from a small midwestern town to New York City to establish himself as a private detective. At first people try to discourage him as he seems highly unqualified. Not only has he... (more) |
|
|
The Turing Option (1992) |
|
| Harry Harrison / Marvin Minksy |
|
A mathematical prodigy uses his expertise in artificial intelligence to repair his own brain after he is shot in the head in this novel by famed AI researcher Marvin Minsky together with science fiction... (more) |
|
|
Twisted (2004) |
|
| Jonathan Kellerman |
|
One of the main characters is a graduate student pursing a Ph.D. in biostatistics, who notes to police detectives that coincidences in the circumstances of several murders are statistically significant,... (more) |
|
|
The Twisted Heart (2009) |
|
| Rebecca Gowers |
|
An English graduate student solves a 19th century murder mystery involving Charles Dickens with the help of her boyfriend, a mathematician.
This book is not yet available in the US and so I have not... (more) |
|
|
Ultima Dea [The Last Goddess] (1994) |
|
| Gianni Riotta |
|
Unfortunately this book does not appear to have been
translated from the original Italian. One of the central
characters in the book, Alfred Diognetus (described as a
"saint mathematician") is the... (more) |
|
|
The Ultimate Crime (1976) |
|
| Isaac Asimov |
|
We all know that Sherlock Holmes' arch enemy was a mathematician,
right? (If not, check out Sherlock Holmes.)
In fact, his second famous paper was on the dynamics of an asteroid.
Now, you may ask,... (more) |
|
|
The Unknowns: A Mystery (2009) |
|
| Benedict Carey |
|
A novel for middle school children which aims to teach mathematical concepts as the young protagonists try to solve the mystery of the disappearances in their neighborhood.
I thoroughly enjoyed the... (more) |
|
|
The Use of Geometry in the Modern Novel (1956) |
|
| Norman Clarke |
|
A slightly humorous short story written as a “how to?” piece. The author asks if a story can be written to reflect a geometrical theorem,
“translating this meager framework into a well piece... (more) |
|
|
The Valley of Fear (1916) |
|
| Sir Arthur Conan Doyle |
|
Having introduced Sherlock Holmes' most famous enemy, Professor
Moriarty, as a mathematician in an earlier
story, Doyle provides us with just a small glimpse of his
mathematical genius (as opposed to... (more) |
|
|
The Visiting Professor (1994) |
|
| Robert Littell |
|
Lemuel Falk, a ``randomnist'' from the Steklov Institute in Russia
gets a visiting position at a chaos research institute in Upstate New
York in this academic farce. He meets a drunkard who studies... (more) |
|
|
Who Killed the Duke of Densmore? (1994) |
|
| Claude Berge |
|
The murder mystery in the title took
place many years ago and the only witnesses are a group of women who each
visited the crime scene for a single stretch of time. They each remember
whom they met... (more) |
|
|
The Witch of Agnesi (2006) |
|
| Robert Spiller |
|
Solid murder mystery in which a high school math teacher finds the murderer of three of her best students.
My favorite thing about this book is the way that Bonnie Pinkwater and her boyfriend -- the... (more) |
|
|
Without a Trace (Episode: Claus and Effect) (2007) |
|
| David Amann (writer) / Alicia Kirk (writer) / Bobby Roth (Director) |
|
In this Christmas special episode of the TV crime drama, a department store Santa turns out to be a mathematical prodigy who has quit his job as a mathematician/programmer due to ethical concerns that his work will cause others to lose their jobs. He becomes involved in a scheme to make money by applying mathematics to gambling.
(more) |
|
|
The Wright 3 (2006) |
|
| Blue Balliet |
|
This is the second mystery book with Calder, Petra and Tommy, where the events take place after those in “Chasing Vermeer”. The main theme in the book is the impending destruction / tear-down... (more) |
|
|
The Zero Clue (1952) |
|
| Rex Stout |
|
Nero Wolfe can't stand Leo Heller, a mathematician who uses operations research to solve mysteries and seems to be superseding Wolfe's own reputation. But then Heller is murdered by one of his clients.... (more) |
|
