| The mathematical inclinations of the victim in this murder mystery are apparent right from the first page. Lost in calculations, Jasper Milton mutters to himself about "equations that can be put to practical use in bettering the lives of people..." before he rushes out and dies on his way to his destination.
One of the amateur detectives investigating the crime is mathematician Lady Cordelia, whom readers of this series would remember from Murder at Queen's Landing. In fact, Cordelia was an old friend of the victim. (He called her by the nickname "Hypatia" when they were children.) It's a good thing she is involved in the investigation, because she is able to recognize the calculus of variations being used in the victim's notes. She later connects this to Sophie Germain's work on elasticity and the dangers of vibrations leading to bridge collapse. It was this application that Milton was working on as just one small part of a grand scheme to improve transportation in Europe.
Seems like a bit of a stretch to me (no pun intended), but it leads to lots of opportunities for the author to promote the usefulness of mathematics and "drop" the names of many mathematicians. |
