Book Review: PhDeath by James P. Carse

About:
PhDeath: The Puzzler Murders by James P. Carse is a fictional mystery taking place at a university in New York. Mr. Carse is a university professor himself.

The publisher is giv­ing away one copy of this book  –to enter fill out the Raf­fle­copt­ter form at the end of the post.

• 320 pages
• Publisher: Opus Books
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1623160669

My rat­ing for PhDeath — 4
Buy PhDeath from Amazon.com*

Thoughts:
PhDeath: The Puzzler Murders by James P. Carse is a very smart murder mystery.  The plot keeps on moving forward and Mr. Carse does not underestimate his audience, writing in rich language and assuming the reader knows what he’s talking about (or, at least, can use an Internet search engine).

The murdered, known only as The Puzzler, sends 10 puzzles to the same university, each puzzle will disclose the name of the professor who is next in line to die. A committee chaired by Prof. Carmody is tasked with solving these puzzles before the next murder. The group gets lots of help, from grade school math teachers to Noble Laureates in solving those puzzles and getting to the murderer.

This book took me a little longer than usual to read because I had a great time trying (emphasis on “trying”) to solve the puzzles, which come in a form of lists (10 each, a pattern repeating itself throughout the book). The first three puzzles I had some luck and one or two of the last ones, but some I had no idea where to even start – all part of the fun.

The social commentary the author provided, being a university professor, was also well worth reading. I’m glad someone in education feels the way he does and that maybe there is some way we can correct the issues.

Buy PhDeath from Amazon.com*

Give­away

• Give­away ends: October, 3 2016
  

• Winners must have a valid e-mail address

• Win­ners will have 24 hours to write back with their address, oth­er­wise an alter­nate win­ner will be picked.

Congratulations: cenya2@

Zohar — Man of la Book
Dis­claimer: I got this book for free.
*Ama­zon links point to an affil­i­ate account