Nova Jacobs

Book Page: It’s been six years since author Nova Jacobs’ debut, The Last Equation of Isaac Severy, hit the bookstands, garnering an Edgar Award nomination for best American debut. And then we waited, and waited some more. I am quite happy to report that her second novel, The Stars Turned Inside Out, is well worth the intermission. Deep underground, in a secret location somewhere outside Geneva, the Large Hadron Collider goes about its business of smashing subatomic particles, allowing scientists to conduct all manner of experiments regarding the nature of the universe. When the body of physicist Howard Anderby is found in one of the tunnels, having apparently been exposed to lethal levels of radiation, security consultant Sabine Leroux is called in to determine the cause. Her investigation unearths several troubling situations that lend credence to the idea that Anderby’s death was not accidental. Sabine conducts interviews with other physicists and staff on-site, volleying scientific jargon back and forth, but it is all clearly explained, never overwhelming and will engender curiosity in the non-scientist reader. In Jacobs’ first book, the murder mystery was overlaid with mathematics; in this book, the murder mystery is overlaid with physics. I live in hope that the next one will feature chemistry or biology, and that I can further my education while doing what I enjoy—reading murder mysteries.… (meer)

The first thing I have to say about this story is that it contains a lot of Physics -- really, really a lot. I know nothing about Physics having managed to dodge the subject in high school, college, and graduate school. The story is also a mystery which is a genre I read and enjoy.

When the body of a young, brilliant physicist is found in the tunnel of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the director calls in her college friend Sabine Leroux, a private investigator, to determine not only how Howard Anderby died but how he found himself in the tunnel in the first place. Sabine studied Physics in college but decided that police work and later private investigation were the career for her. She sees much similarity between her job and the jobs of scientists. Fearing for CERN's funding, the director would greatly prefer not to have to call in the police.

As Sabine investigates, she finds herself dealing with all sorts of academic rivalries and secrets as she tries to learn about the life of a man who was very good at keeping his own secrets. Luckily for us readers, the story is also told in part by Eve who is another physicist at CERN. Eve also had a relationship with Howard and has more insight into his mind than anyone at the lab. The story also includes a large number of flashbacks detailing Eve and Howard's growing relationship and Howard's relationship with some of the others at CERN.

But when a second physicist is murdered and his body shows on a live stream of a tank built to capture dark matter, it is impossible to keep the police away from CERN. The second death also shifts the investigation to missing data from the lab and the scientific rivalries between the EU, China and Russia. Spies and moles and traitors to CERN are revealed in the conclusion of this mystery.

Once I allowed myself to skim lightly over the physics and the philosophy, I enjoyed this story. The characters were what kept me reading when the science went too far over my head. I recommend this one especially to science nerds, but mystery lovers will enjoy it too.… (meer)

Maths.

Similar to the movie Good Will Hunting, this is a different work of fiction involving complex mathematics where no knowledge of the subject is required. And borrowing from another work, Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder, Isaac Severy has written an equation or proof that predicts future events (there is also a game hunt angle).

The book is pretty good; the writing is good, the characters okay, and being a mystery it takes quite a while for the story to evolve which I found made it slow and sometimes boring. But I am also a sucker for books about books, and that the main character owned a bookstore and knew of and cared about books, for me, gave it a bit of a boost.… (meer)

I feel like this book was both better than I thought it was, but not quite as good as I expected. The former because my reading was more fractured than I'd like and the book never got a chance to really suck me in; it was always getting interrupted. The latter, because its novel-to-mystery ratio was higher than I'd have wished.

Isaac Severy was a brilliant mathematician whose last act before dying was writing a bombshell of an equation, which he hid away. Days after his death, his granddaughter receives a letter from him with his last wishes: to burn all his work save this equation, which she should delver to one trusted colleague and no one else. But first, she must find the equation using the clues left for her as she goes about fulfilling his final requests.

At the same time, the rest of the Severy family - blessed with brilliance and saddled with dysfunction - is left to pick up the pieces of their lives, re-orienting themselves after they lose their axis and another death unmoors them completely. Hazel's uncle, Philip, is receiving mysterious notes and visits from someone eager to meet up with him and discuss his father's work, someone who was harassing Isaac in his final days.

I ended up caring about most of the characters except Hazel herself. She was pretty unmoored from the start, and never felt like she had much resolve. For me this resulted in the impression that she never took any direction action to find the equation, so much as the clues threw themselves at her in desperation.

Speaking of clues, my biggest annoyance of all was that one of the clues was not only not discovered by Hazel, but the reader didn't got left out too. Both discover the solution after the fact, and it's a letdown.

These are minor grievances though, and I'm not sure I'd have felt the same way about these things had I been able to commit my time and attention to the book as it deserved. Perhaps more focus would have allowed me to connect more with Hazel and the story's mystery. Either way, it was an enjoyable read and kept me entertained, if not deeply invested.… (meer)