The Fractal Murders: A Pepper Keane Mystery [Paperback]

I was drawn to the book by its title. A book called "The Fractal Murders" had to offer something new. I was pleased to find that it did.

Pepper Keane is a man seeking himself . . . in a single existence filled mostly with the companion of men and his energetic dogs, Buck and Wheat. He's done with pretension, making impressions and seeking the big bucks. But a man does have to stay occupied and he does occasional P.I. jobs while still moonlighting as a brief writer (he's a lawyer by original profession).

Keane hasn't had a job in quite some time when math professor Jayne Smyers hires him to find out if something connects the deaths of three top math experts on fractals. Knowing her statistics, she's sure that this can be no coincidence, and found the investigation by the FBI to be less than satisfying. Taking her retainer, Keane promises to find out what he can . . . but offers no guarantees. Soon, his fine intellect is taking him deep into papers on mathematics and he begins to discern a pattern. Then, using traditional investigative techniques, he begins to sketch in the details. From there, help from not-so-legal friends adds more context. The case builds slowly and unpredictably from these foundations in an extremely pleasing way. Stick around to the end, it's worth your effort. This is one of the best-developed plots I have ever seen in a first novel.

If I liked the book so much, why did I grant four stars instead of five? Well, Mr. Cohen needed a little stronger editing. He puts his descriptions in many places many pages after where they belong and unnecessarily delays revealing other relevant facts. As a result, I found myself rereading pages to figure out what I had missed . . . only to find the material I was looking for 40 pages further on. It was annoying. But I'm sure experience will iron out this problem.

When math professor Jayne Smyers discovers that three other mathematicians, all specialists in fractal geometry, all died under mysterious circumstances, she notifies the FBI. When the feds conclude the deaths were unrelated, the attractive (and single) Jayne hires Pepper to find the connection.

With his sidekick, a hot-headed unemployed astrophysicist named "Two toe" McCutcheon,Pepper begins looking for clues on a journey that takes him to a national forest in the middle of Nebraska, a , and the math department at Harvard, to name a few.

As the clues add up, the suspects multiply, but ultimately the best best to be the bad guy is the very FBI agent that told Jayne the three deaths were unrelated. And that agent, Mike Polk, just happens to have been Pepper's classmate in law school -- a long-time enemy that Pepper still holds responsible for his girlfriend's death 20 years ago.

Don't let the math bother you. Cohen has a gift for explaining complex concepts through dialogue that any six year-old could understand. I learned more about math and philosophy from this book than I did in four years of college, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Cohen's wit and writing ability are evident on every page.

My only criticism is that the book leaves you hanging at the end because you are dying to know whether Pepper and Jayne are going to get together. Evidently Cohen is saving this for a sequel.

Pepper Keane is what you might get if you could combine the writing of Robert B. Parker, Kinky Friedman, and Bertrand Russell with the punching power of Mike Tyson and the wry wit of Mark Twain.

She hires former US Marine's judge magistrate Pepper Keane to set aside his Gordon Lightfoot collection and investigate the three deaths. The link seems nebulous at best with the only commonality being math. However, Pepper becomes a bit suspicious of FBI Agent Mike Polk, who insists coincidence is the only connection since parallel lines never meet. Pepper realizes that his hatred for Post might be causing him to see a radically different pattern as he blames the Denver based agent for the death of his lover, but feels that contrary to Euclid these parallel cases connect at a vertex, which leads back to Post.

Mark Cohen furbishes an entertaining private investigative tale that provides fascinating insight into fractal geometry. Snowflakes and shorelines aside, the mystery is fun to follow as Pepper looks for the pattern that ties the dead trio together while Jayne explains her expertise to him even as he hungers for a closer look at her shape. Don't let the geometry keep you from reading an enjoyable solid analytical mystery that plainly works on several hyperbolic levels with a final twist in which the sum of the angles of a triangle do not equal 180 degrees.

Harriet Klausner