Despite all of this math in the background, most of their relationship (and most of the novel) is instead about drugs. From this book, one would get the impression that everyone in New Zealand is a serious drug addict. The book takes a suspenseful turn when Candy disappears, Jules is found beaten into a coma, and Sam decides to "play detective". Strange things happen, and the reader may begin to feel that some of it is a consequence of Sam's cocaine induced paranoia. Sadly, the mathematics does not end up playing a serious role in the resolution of the "mystery" (such as it is), but instead seems to be a metaphor for something...I'm not sure exactly what.

The most mathematical part of the book is the discussion of the hydrodynamic formulas. (They are presented explicitly, which is nice, but the discussion is not quite accurate. For instance, despite the claim in the book, shallow water waves are dispersive, but the nonlinearity and the dispersion combine to allow for solitary waves....I'm getting too technical, right? Sorry.) Other than that there are just vague references to chaos, using algorithms to improve images obtained from spy satellites, numbers on tickets from a car wash, etc.

Thanks to Olivier Gerard for suggesting this book.