Fabulous Fiction Firsts #677

Fri, 08/03/2018 - 10:47pm by muffy

Fans of Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Library Journal) will find much to like with  Nova Jacobs’ “(h)ugely entertaining” (Wall Street Journal) debut The Last Equation Of Isaac Severy : A Novel In Clues * *

Within days of his apparent suicide (a string of live Christmas lights in the hot tub), Hazel Severy receives a cryptic message from her adopted grandfather, the renowned mathematical genius Isaac Severy, urging her to track down his last equation, safeguard it from a shadowy organization determined to profit from it, all without seeking help from the extended Severy family, including her brother Gregory, a LAPD detective.

Hazel, the owner of a struggling Seattle bookstore feels ill-equipped for the task until she stumbles unto an unlikely ally, but not before death claims 2 more members of the Severy family.

“The story of how Hazel grapples with that daunting instruction...delivers all the page-turning suspense of a mystery novel laced with insights into modern mathematics and quantum physics, and into the dynamics of family relationships. A brilliant first novel…” (Booklist)

* * = 2 starred reviews