The Happy Numbers of Julius Miles

Part existential comedy, part detective story, Keeble (Men and Other Mammals) delights with this satisfying novel. Felicity, a transsexual cupid, spends her days wandering East London in search of lonely strangers in need of love. Julius Miles is a math genius, a statistician at the Royal London Hospital who, the few times he does go out, offends more women than he charms with his clumsy attempts at wooing. Shortly after Felicity sets about her secret work of finding Julius a mate, however, tragedy strikes. Daisy Perkins, Julius’s neighbor, who also happens to be Felicity’s top candidate for Julius’s heart, is murdered. Now Felicity must split her time between finding ungainly Julius a new mate and trying to solve the mystery of Daisy’s death. And all while Julius hilariously struggles with the alarming possibility that he might be the father of Arnold Perkins, Daisy’s surviving child, who is potentially the product of the single, awkward night of passion the two shared and never spoke of afterward. In Keeble’s apt hand, this mess of entanglements is a pleasure to read about—particularly as the perspective of Felicity, his first-person narrator, begins to prove less and less reliable. Keeble’s genre-bending work moves well, and with no shortage of laughs. (Nov.)