All Cry Chaos: An Henri Poincar%C3%A9 Mystery

Textbook author Rosen's promising first novel deftly mixes mathematical puzzles, international intrigue, social upheaval, and religious zealotry. When 30-year-old math genius James Fenster is blown up in his Amsterdam hotel room, via the precise detonation of military-grade rocket fuel, shortly before he was due to address a World Trade Organization conference, Henri Poincar%C3%A9, aging Interpol agent and great-grandson of a legendary mathematician, investigates. Suspicion at first falls on Fenster's former fianc%C3%A9e, a demure antiques dealer, but the trail soon leads Poincar%C3%A9 to a militant Christian millennial group, a Peruvian economics professor on a terrorist watch list, a malevolent mutual-fund executive, a Balkan genocide case decidedly not buried in the past, and a brilliant graduate student of the deceased. A surprising series of personal relationships and connections prove to have all the logic of chaos theory. While the plot has its glitches and dead spots, readers, especially the mathematically inclined, will relish this intellectually provocative whodunit. (Sept.)