Murder, Mystery, M-theory?

Particle theorist Nick Evans has written a murder mystery novel set at a physics institute. The institute, modeled after Perimeter, seems to have been funded by a former physics student who becomes a tech multi-millionaire. Nick was a postdoc in our group when I was a professor at Yale. We wrote papers on topics ranging from quantum chromodynamics of dense matter to N=2 supersymmetry. He's now a professor at Southampton University in the UK. (I don't know if there's much M-theory in the novel, but it sounded better than "meson" or "mirror symmetry" :-)

I notice little diagrams of quarks, Higgs particles and neutrinos embedded in the page-turning prose. Hey, it's gotta be better than anything Dan Brown ever wrote. As Bill Cosby used to say on the Fat Albert cartoon show, "if you're not careful you may learn something!"

A younger researcher, Andreas Born, is found dead at the particle physics institute where he works. A policewoman is assigned the job of penetrating the intellectually charged atmosphere his colleagues work in. She is forced to unravel the mysterious world of subatomic particles to understand the dead man's motivations.

Meanwhile, Carl, one of Andreas' collaborators embarks on an exploration of Andreas' murky life outside physics including sex, drug dealing and bizarre alchemical experiments. Carl is followed by a mysterious stranger and must fight to preserve both his life and the relationship with his girlfriend.

Learn about the frontier of particle physics within a fast paced crime adventure.