Reviews for The last equation of Isaac Severy : a novel in clues

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

*Starred Review* As the discoverer of a powerful equation that predicts the behavior of chaotic systems, Isaac Severy sets in motion a tense chain of events when he dies in his Jacuzzi, leaving his equation behind in a secret repository. Predictably, those intent on recovering the formula include not only theoretical mathematicians but also military strategists and corporate profiteers. But in the riveting narrative that Jacobs spins, it is Isaac's adopted granddaughter, Hazel Severy a young woman indifferent to mathematics who commands readers' primary attention. For it is Hazel, not Isaac's brilliant physicist son, Philip, who receives the stunning letter Isaac posts just before his death. That letter revealing the dark truth about Isaac's death (staged as a suicide) and warning of two more deaths to come instructs Hazel to find the hidden equation and deliver it to a trustworthy Italian colleague. The story of how Hazel grapples with that daunting instruction aided by the talents of an unpredictable cousin but weighed down by the travails of a traumatized brother 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 radiant with promise of even better to come.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2018 Booklist


Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A celebrated mathematician leaves a legacy of inexactitude to his confused progeny.Isaac Severy, the elderly patriarch of a numerically gifted clan, predicts his own demise and awaits his executioner one morning in his Hollywood Hills backyard. After his death, his granddaughter Hazel receives a letter from him containing clues to the equation that is his life's masterwork and also a prediction: "Three will die. I am the first." Only Hazel and, as will be revealed later, her brother, Gregory, have been selected by Isaac to fulfill his mathematical designs, although they are not blood relations but foster children taken in by Isaac's black-sheep son, Tom, and adopted by Isaac after Tom's imprisonment. Hazel is a failed Seattle bookseller, Gregory a not particularly diligent LAPD detective. These two nonmathematical Severys take turns with their uncle Philip, Isaac's son, a particle physicist whose academic career has stalled, having chapters told from their perspectives. Romantic yearnings, of the illicit and/or near-incestuous variety, afflict all three. Several vividly sketched minor players vie for access to Isaac's secret, not least his reclusive daughter, Paige, a probability theorist, and her son, Alex, an aspiring international man of mystery. Strangers are also circling. P. Booth Lyons, allegedly a government agent, has sent his persistent secretary, Nellie Stone, to stalk Philip around the campus of Caltech. A strange professor wants Hazel to meet him at the La Brea Tar Pits. The path to Isaac's equation meanders through a hotel room numbered 137, a stubbornly password-protected computer, and a map of Los Angeles dotted with stickers noting dates and times. The second to die validates Isaac's dire prophecy, lending urgency to the quest to decipher the stickers. In lovely, inventive prose, Jacobs re-engineers the tropes of family drama to explore age-old conundrums of destiny versus self-determination. However, the sheer number of characters and gambits threatens to overwhelm such a relatively short novel, as does the magnitude of its ambition.The eloquence of the language transcendsand almost redeemsthe plot's gimmickry in this remarkable debut. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.


Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

DEBUT Renowned mathematical genius Isaac Severy has predicted his own death, and one of his last acts is to type a letter, asking Hazel, his adopted granddaughter, to track down and deliver his final equation to a trusted colleague. Hazel abandons her failing bookstore in Seattle to join her family in Los Angeles for Isaac's funeral. A student of literature, she's always felt out of place in a family of mathematicians. Doubtful of her abilities and in competition with cousins, academics, and shadowy corporations, she struggles with whom to trust. Her older brother, also a survivor of their troubled childhood and a once-close confidant, is a police detective caught up in his own investigations. Hazel encounters old Hollywood hotels, poisonous seeds, Italian tweeds, and Mark Twain disguises as she puts two and two together. VERDICT Jacobs's debut novel cleverly mixes people, plots, and puzzle with humor and heart. This brainy thriller will appeal to readers who enjoyed 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. [See "Editors' Spring Picks," LJ 2/1/18.]-Catherine Lantz, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago Lib. © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.


Publishers Weekly
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The apparent suicide of a legendary mathematician drives Jacobs's intricate and moving first novel. Isaac Severy, renowned for having developed complex predictive equations for seemingly random events, such as "the erratic pattern of melting ice in the Arctic," dies in the backyard hot tub at his L.A. home after being electrocuted by a string of Christmas lights. His granddaughter, Hazel Severy, the owner of a struggling Seattle bookstore, receives one last letter from him, postmortem. In the letter, Isaac states that he hopes not to evade the assassin who has been following him; asks Hazel to destroy his "work in Room 137," except for one equation, which she must hand over to a man whose "favorite pattern is herringbone"; warns her not to stay in his house after October 31st; and tells her that he is but the first of three people who will die. Hazel attempts to honor her grandfather's cryptic last requests and solve his murder. Plausible depictions of psychologically wounded characters enhance the surprising plot twists. Agent: Lisa Bankoff, Bankoff Collaborative. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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