I would have never wondered that a movie from Hollywood could have been better than a novel by a writer from Argentina. Which is like saying that I prefer a McDonald's plastic-like burger to a succulent meaty asado. But, well, there's always a first time.For the big screen version of "The Oxford Murders" is far from being brilliant, but still better than the original version of the story on print. I think this should tell you a lot regarding this novel. And when you do prefer the big-eyed Elijah Wood and his naive American attitude and accent ("I don't understand") to the unnamed Argentinean main character of this book, that means how this novel is a utter failure. Now call me too harsh, but I actually kind of liked ONLY the opening of this novel with its "Borgesesque" style. Unfortunately, from the second sentence onwards everything began to collapse. Let's face it: the plot of "The Oxford Murders" is dull. The characters are flat, unrealistic and blabber way too much about their own number theories in a way that has nothing of intellectual but is a mix between a cheap imitation of the scholars' lingo and a Dan Brown outtake. Not that Martinez prove to be any better of Mr Brown: actually sometimes he is even worse than him. A few lines are absolutely ludicrous especially while the author is trying to add some exciting red hot chili moments to the boring repetition of those number series of him. Number series you can easily find on one of those "Get your IQ in 30 minutes" paperbacks. In order to excite his little half-wits readers, Martinez calls a thin woman "very huggable" (mmmh, spicy!) and indulges on a supposedly hot scene on a tennis court which made me laugh with astonishment. For those of you who watched the Hollywood movie there is no spaghetti sex in the book, but I have to confess how I actually preferred that blatantly awful scene to the way Martinez write about a love&sex affair. Moreover, the author doesn't even try to justify his choice of choosing Oxford as the main set of this novel by not creating any atmosphere of the town. It's one year I live in Oxfordshire and, apart from naming some local places here and there, Martinez couldn't catch a hint of the town with its mysteries kept beyond the high walls of the colleges. The reason why this book gets two stars and not one is merely because I lived in Oxford and feel a kind of sympathy for the novelists who put the town on paper (Waugh, McEwan, Marias...). That and a surprising reference to one of my favourite Italian writers: Dino Buzzati. But it's not showing us that he read Buzzati (and Prevert) and studied a whole lot of maths that Guillermo Martinez can save this book from a well deserved death by numbers.
Well, this book was not one of my chosen to read, but my literature teacher gave it to us to read it.The book has a good plot and really catches you, because as a crime thriller, you want to advance to know what happened.The only downside of this book is that sometimes is too focused on mathematics, in things that do not really change the book at all. Let's see if I can explain, there is a character who is a mathematician, so their knowledge on the subject is much more advanced (in most of cases) of those who read the book, so it was a bit confusing in my opinion , and I ended up skipping the page where he gave his mathematical explanations, because after all, they not really served to understand the book.I recommend it to all those who like crime novels, after all has a very good plot, personally I quite liked.Bueno, este libro no fue uno de mis escogidos para leer, sino que mi profesora de literatura nos lo dió para que nosotros lo leamos.El libro tiene una buena trama y realmente te atrapa, ya que al ser de suspenso y crímenes, quieres avanzar hasta saber qué pasó.Lo único malo de este libro, es que a veces se centraba demasiado en la matemática, en cosas que realmente no cambian al libro o no. A ver si me explico, hay un personaje que es un matemático, por lo tanto sus conocimientos sobre la materia son muchos más avanzados (en la mayoría de los casos)de los que leemos el libro, así que resultaba un tanto confuso a mi parecer, y terminaba salteando la página en la que daba sus explicaciones matemáticas, porque al fin y al cabo, no servían realmente para comprender el libro.Se lo recomiendo a todos aquellos que les gusten las novelas criminales, a pesar de todo tiene una muy buena trama, personalmente me gustó bastante.
What do You think about The Oxford Murders (2006)?
Rant, possibly with spoilers,As a young girl, I read with my grandma all the Agatha Christie books, and I really enjoyed the ABC Murders, the idea of a logical series being used as a smokescreen was very alluring to me. I am irritated that this book, which takes nearly the same idea, with the same twist, does not in any way allude to or acknowledge, the brilliant Agatha Christie.I am now going to reread the ABC Murders, perhaps the author paid such delicate homage to her, that I've somehow missed it? It was a good book, well written, with the math and forensics well explained, but the whole sense that I knew what was coming because I'd read Christie's book was a little off putting.
—Valerie
A pesar de que el género detectivesco no es de mis favoritos, esta historia está muy bien escrita y me entretuvo bastante más de lo que esperaba. Es una historia ideal para hacernos pensar y buscar esas pequeñas pistas que va dejando el autor. A mí en particular me tomó de sorpresa el giro de la trama que llevó a descubrir al "culpable" y eso me encantó. Creo que lo que más ayuda a meterse en el mundo creado por el autor, es que este está narrado en primera persona, y vemos y descubrimos las cosas a través de su protagonista quien no siempre llega a ver todas las cartas del juego. Muy recomendable
—Ale Rivero
This is a short, compelling thriller about a series of murders, or what appears to be a series and what appear to be murders, in early 1990s Oxford. What makes it unique is its narration by an Argentine graduate student – modelled on the author, a Buenos Aires mathematics professor – and its interweaving of meditations on mathematical principles, notably those concerning the variety of possible explanations for observed phenomena. This is much less pretentious than it sounds. Though a bit of a scientific dullard, I only found one of these passages tough to chew, and the sage of the drama, the wonderfully-named genius Arthur Seldom, is likeably ordinary. Martinez’s prose is straightforward and the Argentine perspective unobtrusive. While the narrator makes a few predictable comments about the weather and English reserve, he is more a witness to the commonality of the human character. The Oxford Murders is also a university novel that, though it touches on such themes as academic rivalry, roams freely from the campus. Martinez peoples his tale with credible human beings and avoids the clever-clever, allusion-filled patter one finds in novels and films set at U.S. colleges.
—Andrew Paxman
